Political Vacuum in Lebanon: An attribute of Aoun’s Era

www.majalla.com Issue 1919- August- 26/08/2022 2 AWeeklyPoliticalNewsMagazine www.majalla.com Issue 1919-August-26/08/2022 Sanna Marin: The Youngest PM in the History of FinlandA Weekly Political News Magazine Political Vacuum in Lebanon: An attribute of Aoun’s Era Stagnation in Syria’s Real Estate Market Talk of Annihilation and Demographic Suicide from Vietnam to Germany

At the same time, a news report from the US Guantanamo prison in Cuba, where about 50 terrorist suspects have been waiting justice for about 20 years, repeated the endless legal arguments that have been made all this time.

In Syria, Jiwan Soz speaks about how the efforts of countries located in Syria’s vicinity and working to return Syrian refugees to their country forced the refugees to head to the real estate market, which is witnessing a major stagnation against the backdrop of the war in Syria.

The political vacuum has become a fashion in Lebanon as it has lived through it many times, whether through a president or prime minister who have assumed the executive authority under the Taif Agreement, due to conflicts between political forces that are not interested in people’s affairs, grievances, problems and suffering.

In the cover story, Omar El-Natour said that at the level of the presidential vacuum, Lebanon witnessed long term vacancies in the position of the Thepresident.writer explained how the political vacuum had affect Lebanon’s social and economic conditions throughout the years.

According to week’s court proceeding in Alexandria, a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, Sudanese-British El Shafee Elsheikh was sentenced to eight life imprisonment terms for his role as part of the “Jihadi Beatles,” who were members of Islamic State (IS) and slaughtered Americans in Syria.

In the politics section, Mohamed Ali Salih said that that was the contrast between two ways the US has been conducting its Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), particularly the treatment of captured terrorist suspects.

Last week’s sentencing of Elsheikh followed an earlier one, in the same court, of his fellow “Beatle,” British-Ghanian Alexanda Kotey.

Read these articles and more on our website eng.majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our readers’ feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website.

In the politics section, he said that the war, in which international and regional parties participated, led to the displacement and asylum of millions inside and outside the country, after their areas were subjected to military operations that partially or completely destroyed their homes, depending on the intensity of the battles to which they were exposed.

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Ukrainians in Malta take part in a demonstration ahead of Ukraine›s In dependence Day and six months since the Russian invasion began, in Valletta, Malta, August 23, 2022. REUTERS Ukraine’s Independence Day

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Dancers perform during the traditional Onion Festival in Spunciems, The theme of this year›s celebration is ‹Onions at home and in the Onion Festival

world›. EPA Latvia

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Egypt’s state grains buyer directly purchased 240,000 tonnes of Russian wheat on Monday, the supply ministry said in a statement to Reuters, continuing its recent trend of buying without issuing international tenders.

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The General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC) bought six 40,000 tonne-cargoes on a cost and freight basis, with payment via 180-day letters of credit, two people with knowledge of the matter

EGYPT SAUDI LEBANON

Thesaid.ministry did not disclose the price but traders said they thought it was sold at a price of $368 per tonne, around an 8% drop from its last purchase in July.

OPEC

Another signi cant section of the devastated Beirut Port silos collapsed on Tuesday morning in a cloud of dust. No injuries were reported — the area had been long evacuated — but the collapse was another painful reminder of the horri c August 2020 Theexplosion.collapse left the silos’ southern part standing next to a pile of charred ruins. The northern block had already been slowly tipping over since the initial explosion two years ago but rapidly deteriorated after it caught re over a month ago due to fermenting grains.

IRAN QATAR

SAUDI ARABIAUAEstands ready to cut output to correct a price decline driven by poor futures liquidity and macro-economic fears, ignored extremely tight physical supply, OPEC's leader Saudi Arabia said Monday.news agency SPA cited Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin telling Bloomberg OPEC+ has the exibility to deal with challenges. have dropped in recent weeks to $95 per barrel from as high as $120 on Chinese economic slowdown and a in the TheWest.United Arab Emirates plans to reinstate its ambassador to Iran for the rst time in six years, the Emirati Foreign Ministry announced Sunday, as the Gulf Arab federation accelerates e orts to improve ties with the nation it has long viewed as a regional threat.

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The Pentagon says U.S. military airstrikes in eastern Syria this week were a message to Iran and Tehran-backed militias that targeted American troops this month and several other times over the past Colinyear.Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, told reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. airstrikes overnight on facilities used by militias backed by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard demonstrated that “the United States will not hesitate to defend itself against Iranian and Iran-backed aggression when it occurs.”

Saudi Arabia will grant visas to those holding tickets to the World Cup in neighboring Qatar, the kingdom has Theannounced.SaudiForeign Ministry said in a statement late Wednesday those registered for Qatar’s Hayya fan card will be able to apply for multiple-entry visas 10 days before the tournament starts. Those granted visas will be able to stay for up to 60 days in Saudi TheArabia.Hayya card is mandatory for ticket holders going to the World Cup in November and December.

The Bank of Canada is revamping its fourth deputy governor role in an e ort to bring "fresh and diverse perspectives" to its governing council, seeking out an external candidate to help set monetary policy on a part-time basis.

The Bank of Canada did not give a timeframe for nding a new hire.

Former nance minister Rishi Sunak, one of two candidates vying to be Britain's next premier, criticized the way outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson handled the COVID-19 pandemic, saying it had been a mistake to "empower" scientists and that the downsides of lockdowns were suppressed.

The central bank on Thursday launched the process to nd a replacement for Deputy Governor Timothy Lane, whose Sept. 16 retirement was announced in June.

The tally is based on this month's In ation Reduction and CHIPS acts and last year's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Together they fund climate-related research and pilot studies and support manufacturing.

A WEEK ACROSS , CANADA. U.S. U.K. The U.S. government will spend more than $500 billion on climate technology and clean energy over the next decade under three recently enacted laws, an analysis by non-pro t RMI found.

The ruling Conservative Party is choosing a new leader after Johnson was forced to quit when dozens of ministers resigned in protest at a series of scandals and missteps.

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The new deputy governor will join the Bank of Canada's six-person governing council, which is responsible for setting interest rates.

CHINA. INDIA.

The United States is providing Kyiv nearly $3 billion for weapons and equipment in Washington's "biggest tranche of security assistance to date", U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday, six months after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The sprawling Chinese region of Chongqing, home to several large global automakers, extended power curbs at factories as a record heatwave and drought continue to wreak economic and environmental damage throughout the country's Industrialsouthwest.

The approximately $2.98 billion in military aid "will allow Ukraine to acquire air defense systems, artillery systems and counter-unmannedmunitions,aerial systems, and radars to ensure it can continue to defend itself over the long term", Biden said in a statement released by the White House. India has su cient stocks of wheat and there is no plan to import the grain, the government clari ed on Sunday after some media outlets reported New Delhi was planning to import wheat.

UKRAINE.

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ACROSS THE WORLD

rms were originally ordered to restrict output from Aug. 17 until Aug. 24, but formal curbs were extended through Thursday and will be gradually relaxed "in an orderly manner" once weather conditions have improved, according to a notice issued by Chongqing authorities on Wednesday.

The first was between September 1988 and November 1989, when former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel decided, after the end of his term and after the Parliament failed to choose a replacement for him, to form a six-party military government headed by Army Commander Michel Aoun de spite the presence of a civilian government headed by Dr. Salim Hoss.

Political Vacuum in Lebanon: An attribute of Aoun’s Era over storyCVacuum

The Muslim ministers, Major General Mahmoud Tay Abu Dargham, Brigadier General Muhammad Nabil Koraytem, and Colonel Lotfi Jaber decided immediately after the for mation of the government to apologize for participating in it, due to the circumstances of the formation and their lack of consultation before the formation.

The political vacuum has become a fashion in Lebanon as it has lived through it many times, whether through a president or prime minister who have assumed the executive authority under the Taif Agreement, due to conflicts between political forces that are not interested in people’s affairs, grievances, problems and suffering.

But Aoun went ahead with his government and occupied the presidential palace in Baabda and refused to recognize the existing government.

14 26/08/22

Having Repercussions on Lebanon’s Economic, Social Conditions

At the level of the presidential vacancy, Lebanon witnessed long term vacancies in the position of the president.

By Omar El-Natour

* The government of Hassan Diab, which was formed on January 21, 2020, and became a caretaker government after the port explosion on August 4, 2020, and continued until September 10, 2021, with the formation of the Najib Mikati

The country has suffered from huge financial and economic losses as a result of these gaps in leadership.

Today,government.Lebanon faces a new cycle of vacuums caused by the fact that Mikati’s government, which was formed in Septem ber 2021, was considered to have resigned after the parlia mentary elections that took place on May 14, 2022.

* Tammam Salam government: This government became a caretaker government following the presidential vacuum in 2014, and remained in this situation until late 2016 after the election of Aoun as President.

*Najib Mikati’s government (March 2013-February 2014): This government continued to manage Lebanon’s affairs on a small scale after its resignation due to the sharp political division over elections and appointments to senior jobs.

Bassil wants to guarantee his control of a third of the portfo lios of the cabinet and requires the dismissal of the Governor of the Banque du Liban, the Army Commander, the Presi dent of the Supreme Judicial Council, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Middle East Airlines, Muhammad Al-Hout and the Director General of the Tenders Adminis tration Dr. Jean Al-Aliyah in order to enhance his adminis trative position after the end of his uncle’s term. As a result, the caretaker government is continuing until 15 26/08/22

As for the caretaker governments, Lebanon witnessed this situation more than once, especially during the era of Aoun.

* Saad Hariri’s second government (May 2018-January 2019): This government turned into a caretaker govern ment because of the arduous consultations and the obstacles placed in the face of the president-designate by the President and his political team.

At the level of the presidential vacancy, Lebanon witnessed long term vacancies in the position of the president.

Between November 2007 and May 2008, Lebanon wit nessed a presidential vacancy after the extended half-term of President Emile Lahoud ended at the behest of the Syrian Theregime.reason was the lack of agreement on a successor and the vacuum continued until the Doha Conference was held from May 16 to May 22, 2008, and led to the election of Army Commander Michel Suleiman as President.

He waged wars of elimination against the Lebanese forces and ordered the bombing of his opponents in the western region of the capital, leading to the election of a new presi dent: Rene Moawad. Moawad was assassinated before assuming his duties and then Aoun refused to recognize the election of President Eli as Hrawi because he refused to accept the Taif Agreement that ended the civil war which erupted in Lebanon in 1975. Back then, he did not leave the palace until after the Syrian planes raided the palace when he fled in his pajamas towards the French embassy, seeking political asylum.

Lebanon’s Central Bank building is pictured behind a razor wire fence, in Beirut, Lebanon July 19, 2022.

Although Mikati was commissioned by the new Parliament to form a new government on June 23, 2022, he did not suc ceed after the President rejected the formation presented to him by the president-designate because it would not achieve the ambitions of his son-in-law, Gibran Bassil.

hamedREUTERS/MoAzakir

Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun during a ceremony for Army Day at a military barracks in Fayadiyeh, on the eastern outskirts of the capital, on August 1, 2022. ( AFP)

The longest presidential vacancy was between May 2014 and October 2016, and amounted to 29 months. This vac uum began when the term of President Suleiman finished, and did not end until after the election of Aoun as president because of Hezbollah’s insistence on his election.

* Fouad Siniora’s government: This government became a caretaker from late 2006 until mid-2008, after the Shiite ministers resigned from the government.

“The banking situation will become more critical in light of the growing distrust and it will be difficult to move forward with banking restructuring in light of the lack of regularity in government work.

“What about the repercussions if Lebanon falls into the for bidding presidential vacuum?

“It is also certain that the presidential vacuum under a care taker government will multiply the dangers resulting from the vacuum and prevent astute shareholders and investors from banking recapitalization and investing in the banking sector. As for deposits and depositors, this issue is likely to be without any prospects in light of the increasingly danger ous situation as a result of this vacuum.

over story

“No political or economic observer can but conclude that the main reason for the current crisis is the absence of the political will for reform, and that the absence of a political solution remains one of the biggest causes of the crisis af flicting Lebanon.

“There is fear of political repercussions and their conse quences, the danger of a social explosion and the possibil ity of the country being exposed to security risks as well as financial and monetary repercussions in the event of lack of confidence in the banking sector by the Lebanese people and other residents.

16 26/08/22 today and it seems that it will remain until after the end of Aoun’s term on October 31, unless international and domes tic pressures succeed in changing the current reality.

“Thisdebt. also applies to the water resources, which could have contributed to the transfer of Lebanon from a creditor coun try to a prosperous country. There are many examples of lost time and opportunities. What was the fate of the CEDRE Conference and how was the subject of the series of ranks and salaries dealt with?

Baasiri The former deputy governor of the Banque du Liban, Dr. Muhammad Baasiri, stressed that one of the most dangerous things that Lebanon faced and is still facing is wasting op portunities and wasting time.

The question being asked today is how the faltering Leba nese economy and the faltering banking sector will survive in light of a presidential vacancy and a caretaker govern ment, and who is affected by this reality, and whether an agreement will be reached with the International Monetary TheseFund. questions were posed by Majalla to prominent bank ing leaders who came up with the following answers.

“Despite the existence of a plan or plans that were approved in the Hariri government years ago, they remained only ink on paper. The financial bleeding continued in this sector, while the deficit accrued to more than 40% of the public

“The lack of investment resulting from the presidential vac uum will cast a heavy shadow on the value of the national currency and the deficit in the trade balance and payments is likely to increase, which will directly affect the value of the local “Thiscurrency.isinaddition to the decrease in the foreign reserves of the Banque du Liban, which remains the main financier of the state and the financing of imports.

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“I believe that it is natural for negotiations with the Inter national Monetary Fund to slow down with the presidential Muhammad Baasiri, former deputy governor of the Banque du Liban Today, Lebanon faces a new cycle of vacuums caused by the fact that Mikati’s government, which was formed in September 2021, was considered to have resigned after the parliamentary elections that took place on May 2022 ,14.

vacancy, and thus the cost of recovery will increase with the possibility that the country will continue to be in a clinically dangerous situation, surviving on the humanitarian aid pro vided to it, even if temporarily and limitedly.

“Thiscountries.year,suddenly and dramatically, this great downfall was manifested by the banks stopping to pay deposits to customers and adopting the policy of ‘rationing’ and setting limits on withdrawals.

“In conclusion, the presidential vacuum will result in in creased costs for the revival and restoration of confidence, and consequently the possibility of Lebanon to prosper, and also to continue as a natural country that its children would like to live and stay in.”

Boldakian

“Lebanese banks succeeded due to the strength of their ad ministrations and their commitment to international banking standards, as well as a result of the presence of a strong cen tral bank and the most important period of political relaxa tion from 2007 to 2011 amid a fire that ignited all neighbor ing

“Politics in the past three years played a negative role that contributed to the exacerbation of the banking sector crisis and other crises, as the level of political instability increased at the national level, disrupting the work of constitutional institutions and administrations, reducing the volume of lo cal and international confidence in Lebanon, and raising the level of internal political differences that contributed to hin dering any decision-making that could rescue the country and the “Today,people.whenwe are close to the election of a new president in October, hope has returned to the Lebanese people that they can get out of the crises that have exhausted them over the past three years, provided that our politicians choose the appropriate president, who enjoys the confidence of the Lebanese and the world.

17 26/08/22

“The situation of the banks was worsened by the exposure of the Banque du Liban to high financial losses, a signifi cant decline in the bank’s liquidity, and the exposure of the state’s finances, which had stopped paying its international dues since 2019.

Despite the existence of a plan or plans that were approved in the Hariri government years ago, they remained only ink on paper. The financial bleeding continued in this sector, while the deficit accrued to more than %40 of the public debt

“It would be the person who is able to reunite the Lebanese around a single national rescue political project. The presi dent is the decision-maker who is far from corruption and Samir Hammoud, former head of the Banking Control Committee

“The hope of reaching a final agreement with the Fund is not important in lending Lebanon some billions of dollars, but rather in persuading or encouraging donor countries to invest in the country’s infrastructure, as was the objective of the CEDRE Conference.

“The Lebanese banking sector, like the international bank ing sectors, was known for its ‘ups and downs’ for many years, affected by political factors and the security turmoil it witnessed in the seventies, i.e., the civil war. Then it was af fected by the Israeli wars on Lebanon as well as the wave of political assassinations in 2005, especially the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

“As we mentioned, the banking crisis is worsening and growing as the pace of the financial collapse accelerates, and the life and living crises of the Lebanese people increases.

In turn, the former Deputy Governor of the Banque du Li ban, Dr. Makrdish Boldakian, considered that, from the end of the fifties to 2019, the Lebanese banking sector formed a main lever for the Lebanese economy, and made Beirut in particular an important financial center in the Middle East. It was the focus of attention of the Arab Gulf countries and the West alike, as enhanced by its banking secrecy which at tracted the attention of financiers and owners of huge capital.

“Lebanon has become accustomed to a vacuum, and not for short periods such as the years 2014 to 2016 until the election of a president. Since it has happened repeatedly in caretaker governments for irregular intervals, the country’s familiarity with such matters mitigates the risks to the bank We are coming quickly to a presidential vacuum and we see that the conduct of business will be prolonged and the banking sector is in crisis and the Central Bank has not elected a president.

“Lebanon is at a crossroads full of dangers which requires all of us to rise to the level of the challenges and dangers and to start providing policies and mechanisms to confront them in order to get out of the state of misery and disintegration we live in.”

“Some in Lebanon fear that the presidential elections will be disrupted and that this delay will affect the entire Lebanese Whatsituation.”about the repercussions of this disruption, if it specifi cally affects the banking sector?

Boldakian says, “It is clear that any major political crisis, such as a political vacuum in the presidency, will have nega tive repercussions on the general situation in the country and affect all components of the economy, especially the bank ing component, with negative repercussions, as this sector is affected more than other economic sectors by the factors of political and security stability.

“This matter is also reflected in the safety of deposits. Some even believe that the occurrence of this matter, especially if it continues for a long time, may lead to Lebanon’s exit from the global financial system, the bankruptcy of banks and the loss of depositors’ savings, thus turning Lebanon into an economically isolated island.

18 26/08/22 the “Basedcorrupt.on the foregoing, the Lebanese people, as well as the international community, are watching the tracks of the presidential elections in Lebanon, and they all hope to com plete this election on time, so that Lebanon can benefit from an additional opportunity to begin facing its serious crises, foremost of which is the crisis of its banking sector.

“In sum, Lebanon is facing the most important political event that can bring with it either the signs of restoring con fidence and consequently the beginning of liberation from its crises, or we can expect more crises and an aggravation of them with their political and economic dimensions.

Hammoud The former head of the Banking Control Committee Dr. Samir Hammoud considered, “Any vacuum in any consti tutional institution has repercussions on the exchange rate, meaning that the absence of the President cannot be consid ered the same as his presence and also the prime minister if he is the head of a caretaker government or a government that is fully operational.

Makrdish Boldakian, former Deputy Governor of the Banque du Liban over story

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“All these results mean first and foremost the extent of the great damage that will be inflicted on the banking sector if the country enters into a presidential vacuum crisis.

“In my opinion, the presidential vacuum means: first, stop ping the process of criminal scrutiny of cases related to loot ing public money. Secondly, stopping the implementation of the economic recovery plan, which leads directly to the loss of the agreement with the International Monetary Fund. Thirdly, stopping the loss of local and global confidence.

“Any disruption in these two factors exposes banks to all kinds of risks, foremost of which is ‘trust,’ which remains the bank’s strongest guarantor, because any delay in elect ing a president within the constitutional time period means, frankly and clearly, an increase in risks to the banking sector.

“If you no longer have a new governor, during this year the central bank must rearrange the banking sector and restruc ture “Weit.are coming quickly to a presidential vacuum and we see that the conduct of business will be prolonged and the bank ing sector is in crisis and the Central Bank has not elected a “Aspresident.forthe impact of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, negotiations will continue with the Central Bank and the government even if the final agreement re mains subject to a legitimate government, because the Fund requires two things: “The first: laws, and here the parliament remains active for any new legislation; and, “The second: monetary policy and a banking system, and here even the caretaker government can secure it.”

“On the price of an exchange platform, my expectations are that the absence of a president, or a vacancy in the position of the President under a caretaker government, will not have a significant impact on the banking sector, noting that the banking and economic situation will continue to deteriorate because there has been a kind of adaptation to changes and turmoil.”

ing “Butsector.themost important thing in my opinion is the immi nent calamity that can occur after a year if a governor is not appointed to the Banque du Liban in August 2023, after the term of Governor Riad Salameh ends. This matter is a serious risk.

The expert in banking risks, Dr. Muhammad Fahili, believes that even in the presence of a legislative authority in the Par liament and an executive authority in the Presidency of the Cabinet and in the presence of a President of a complete and integrated republic, the productivity of this political class is unreliable and the greatest evidence of this is the recov ery plan from which no clause has been implemented. This comes in addition to the capital control law which has not yielded any results so far.

“I believe that we have not yet seen the last chapters of these “Asamendments.fortheimpact of not electing a president on the banking sector or on the economy in general, I think that the only prob lem that could occur in the lost time between the end of Presi dent Michel Aoun’s term and the election of a new president is that it will give space to monopolists and speculators in the exchange market, and may have produced turmoil that may be harmful in the exchange market and puts the country and the citizens at the mercy of those who own the banknotes.

“On the other hand, it is said that the Banque du Liban has been assigned to manage the economy and as long as its governor remains in office, the absence of a president or a caretaker government will not have a significant impact on the performance of the banking sector, because this sector is in a situation similar to autopilot.

“Until today, the amendments made to the Banking Secrecy Law are not reliable because they do not meet the conditions for fighting corruption, but rather give a veiled immunity in the context of holding the perpetrator accountable.

19 26/08/22 An electoral worker shows an empty ballot box at a polling station before it opens for the parliamentary election, in Beirut, Lebanon May 15, 2022. REUTERS/ Mohamed Azakir

Stagnation in Syria’s Real Estate Market

Refugees Looking for Shelter in Their Country in Fear of ThreeDeportationSyrian refugees residing in the Lebanese capital of Beirut said, “The Lebanese authorities have refrained from renewing our residencies, which has made us live in great concern, as we do not know when we will be deported to

By Jiwan Soz

Refugees Looking to Buy Properties in Fear of Being Departed to Their Country Politics

20 26/08/22

The efforts of countries located in Syria’s vicinity and working to return Syrian refugees to their country forced the refugees to head to the real estate market, which is witnessing a major stagnation against the backdrop of the war in Syria. The war erupted after popular protests in the country in mid-March of the year 2011. At that time, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was toppled. The war, in which international and regional parties par ticipated, led to the displacement and asylum of millions inside and outside the country, after their areas were sub jected to military operations that partially or completely destroyed their homes, depending on the intensity of the battles to which they were exposed.

He stressed that “the objectives of buying and selling differ from one person to another, as there are those who no longer have a stable income or work, but they own several properties. So they try to sell some of them to live off their sales price, while others try to sell what they own to leave the country, and there are those who buy for fear of returning to the camps upon deportation to TheSyria.”situation of other Syrian refugees residing in Tur key is not different from that of their peers in Lebanon.

Another refugee from the Syrian province of Aleppo said, “The presence of a king’s house makes us feel safe. Therefore, we must secure a house before our pos sible return, especially since my brother, who is resid ing in Syria, will take over the process of buying and registering the property.”

A general view shot shows a neighbourhood in

Syrian

Housing Insurance Is One of Basic Re quirements to Return

He added, “These refugees who bought homes are afraid to return to Syria, while the owners who were able to sell them through me were thinking of emigrat ing with the proceeds of their home sales.”

our country. So, we are trying to secure housing before our return.”

The three Syrian refugees live in the Bourj Hammoud area on the outskirts of Beirut, where they have been working in construction and home decoration work since they left Syria in 2012, after the Syrian regions from which they come witnessed military operations between government forces and the opposition.

He continued, “The return has requirements, including home insurance, and therefore I bought a house in Syria in installments so that I could get rid of the rent upon my Thisreturn.”refugee is one of hundreds of Syrians residing in the Bourj Hammoud region, who are afraid of being sent back to their country amid “unfavorable conditions for their return,” as they put it.

He continued, “Refugees contacted me from Lebanon and Turkey asking about affordable properties, and we have many offers, so any of them can find their request after a short search.”

He added that “what contributes to the demand for buy ing real estate is the attempts of countries to return the refugees, as they are trying to secure a foothold before deporting them to the country.”

The war, in which international and regional parties participated, led to the displacement and asylum of millions inside and outside the country. the capital Damascus.

This refugee is trying to get a house in the Sheikh Maq soud area on the outskirts of Aleppo, stressing that real estate prices in popular areas have not increased much compared to the high-end neighborhoods of the city.

21 26/08/22

Majalla spoke to other refugees looking for “modest” homes in order to buy them to avoid their return.

Buying Home Is Better Than Renting When There Is No Work One of them told Majalla, “The cost of the monthly rent for a house that is sufficient for our family of four in the suburbs of the capital, Damascus, seems expensive in comparison to the lack of job opportunities. That is why I bought a house in installments after I was able to pay half of its price, while my brother who lives in Europe sends the monthly installments.”

According to the sources, real estate prices in the highend neighborhoods decreased more compared to the popular neighborhoods due to the exodus of the owners from the country or their desire to leave the country, which prompts them to sell their homes at lower prices.

This refugee aims to get rid of his monthly rent because he may not be able to pay it if he does not get a job in the event of his possible return to Syria.

Sources told Majalla, “Real estate prices in Aleppo seem to be comparable at the present time to the prices that were before the war. For example, in 2010, an apartment could be bought for 20,000 US dollars in a popular area, but today it can be bought for USD15,000 and maybe less.”

He stressed that “the movement of sales in slum areas seems faster, as they do not need government treatment in real estate departments.” He revealed that “three refugees, two of whom live in Lebanon and the other in Turkey, bought three proper ties through me last week.”

(AFP PHOTO / LOUAI BESHARA)

He added, “The Lebanese government is constantly talking about returning refugees, and this means that our return may be at any time.”

Real Estate Prices Vary Compared to Prewar Period

A real estate dealer from Aleppo said, “The demand for real estate purchases is weak, but the purchasing movement is renewed from time to time according to the political and military conditions in the city.”

Refugees Buy with Intention of Returning and Others Sell In Order to Emigrate

Real Estate Prices Rise with Depreciation of Lira

He stressed that “the issue of refugees from Turkey 22 26/08/22

EconomicDamascus.researcher Hazem Awad said that “the move ment of real estate markets has not yet been activated.

Against Dollar

Real Estate Purchases Decrease Com pared to Last Year

Despite the demand of Syrian refugee families in Tur key and Lebanon to buy real estate in their country, the requests for purchase are much lower than the offers for sale, according to what a researcher and an eco nomic expert told Majalla from the Syrian capital of

He added that “Syrians’ financial solvency is weak, and the lack of liquidity in the market prompts people to re frain from freezing their money in real estate that may not be sold due to price inflation. Therefore, the real estate market is not witnessing any activity, especially with the new migration season that pushes people to offer their properties for sale.”

The supply is large and the demand is little against the background of high prices. Therefore, whoever owns a property always adjusts its price according to the ex change rate of the Syrian pound, and thus real estate prices are constantly rising.”

He continued, “Groups on social networking sites indi cate that supply is greater than demand, and there are those who got involved in the market after building real estate with the aim of investing but were shocked by the lack of customers, and only benefited from rents that, despite their high levels, remain low compared to the capital investment.

“What contributes to the demand for buying real estate is the attempts of countries to return the refugees.”

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Children playing in Barzeh Deimashqi)2017Damascusneighborhood,–April,22.(LensYoung

“There was a previous movement for sale, but the real estate market stagnated after the decision to compel real estate sales to pass a percentage of the property price through bank transfers, which complicated this issue.”

They also fear deportation to their country after the Turkish government reiterated its desire to return more than a million refugees to Syria by next year. They Refuse to Return to Camps

Several Syrian families living in the Turkish state of Entebbe stressed that they plan to secure homes for themselves before returning them to Syria, where they will not be keen to live in temporary housing that the Syrian government says it will provide to everyone who has no shelter. These families refuse to live in camps or temporary housing upon their deportation to Syria, where they wish to return to their original areas in the eastern coun tryside of Aleppo.

Awad also stressed that “the real estate market is af fected by the decline of the Syrian pound against the US dollar, as real estate owners are trying to raise the price of their properties to offset the depreciation of the pound, and thus the percentage of real estate pur chases in the current 2022 year has decreased compared to 2021.”

Real Estate Loans Are Not Available to Everyone

The financial data of the Syrian Real Estate Bank revealed that during the first half of this year, it granted 15.9 billion Syrian pounds as housing loans, of which 9.6 billion Syrian pounds were restoration loans, while loans for the purchase of ready-made housing did not exceed 1.8 billion Syrian pounds, and loans for the purchase of an unfinished home were about one billion Syrian Claddingpounds. loans exceeded 1.7 billion pounds, and co operative society loans did not exceed 100 million Inpounds.2021, the Real Estate Bank had granted 3808 housing loans whose total value exceeded 22.9 bil lion pounds, most of which were restoration loans at 44% of the number of loans granted, while the bank granted 409 home purchase loans worth 4.3 billion pounds. In the last month of last year, 490 loans were granted, worth 3.8 billion pounds.

Real Estate Bank Has Strict Conditions for Obtaining a Loan

For example, how can an employee whose monthly sal ary is 100,000 Syrian pounds be able to pay 100 mil lion loan installments? 23 26/08/22

(AP PHOTO)

and Lebanon buying real estate has not yet affected the movement of the market, especially since large num bers of them are considering emigrating to Europe, provided that they pay the money they have to buy a property in Syria.”

Syrian refugees gather in and near their vehicles getting ready to cross into Syria from the eastern Lebanese border town of Arsal, Lebanon.

“The issue of refugees from Turkey and Lebanon buying real estate has not yet affected the movement of the market.”

Although thousands of Syrians received loans from the Real Estate Bank this year and last year, this matter does not solve the problem of most of them, especially since the expenditure has strict conditions for obtaining housing loans that most Syrians do not meet, according to another economic analyst who lives in the capital, TheDamascus.economic expert said that “the Real Estate Bank is studying the possibility of raising the loan ceiling from 50 million to 100 million Syrian pounds, but the owner of this loan will fall into the problem of installments and bank interests.”

By Mehdi Akbaei Both the United States and the European Union announced through their spokespersons that they were «considering» a response to the so-called «final text» of an agreement to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The relevant data immediately cast doubt on the possibility of a successful resolution of the negotiation process that has been going on intermittently for more than 17 months.

24 26/08/22

Iranian Regime Refuses to Accept Final Draft; Continues Its Policy of Deception Politics

US officials responded immediately and publicly by saying the US was ready to implement the agreement based on EU proposals, but Tehran indicated its intention to review the draft and then respond with Thecomments.response came, quite literally, at the last minute, as Iranian officials announced in advance that they would submit their comments at midnight on Monday, thus pushing the boundaries of the EU-imposed Nabiladeadline.Massrali, the European Union›s spokeswoman for foreign affairs and security policy, specifically cautioned against misconstruing the timing, but other people familiar with the negotiation process have argued for weeks that the Iranian regime is following a deliberate strategy to extend the process as much as possible. This explanation of the regime›s actions is supported by the content of the Iranian regime›s response. Few details of that response were provided on Tuesday, either by the Western parties or by Iran itself, but it immediately became clear that it conveyed the expectation of additional Thistalks.

intention appears to ignore previous comments from EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who stated that all avenues for compromise had been exhausted in previous rounds of negotiations and that the current draft would not undergo further changes.

But public statements by Iranian officials about Tehran›s response to that draft indicate that the regime does not expect the European Union or the United States to actually abide by this Indeed,commitment.areportby the state Islamic Republic News Agency boasted that the United States had already shown «verbal flexibility» on two of the three outstanding issues and that Iranian negotiators were demanding that similar flexibility be written into the actual text of the Beforeagreement.delivering the Iranian regime›s response, Reuters and other news outlets reported that three potential points of contention are: the continued investigation of the International Atomic Energy Agency into the possible military dimensions of Iran›s nuclear activities; the question of whether this is in the long term and to what extent and whether it can guarantee adherence to the agreement; and, the status of the mullahs›

An anonymous European source with links to those negotiations even told reporters earlier this month, “We will not change a single word or add a single comma in the current draft.»

The European Union coordinator for those negotiations, Enrique Mora, presented the draft proposal last week with instructions for the United States and Iran to respond by Monday, and to indicate whether they would accept the agreement in its current form.

Accordingguards. to media reports, the Iranian regime›s response to the draft agreement did not refer to the regime›s pre-existing demands to close the investigation as a precondition for re-implementation of the nuclear deal.

«Both the United States and the European Union announced through their spokespersons that they were «considering» a response to the so-called «final text» of an agreement to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.»

However, the European Union was open 25 26/08/22

The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 2022 ,21 REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/ Illustration

On the surface, this appears to open the door to resolving this unique outstanding issue. But that door was always open while Tehran was credibly accused of refusing to go through it. In June, the International Atomic Energy Agency›s Board of Governors voted to formally condemn the Iranian regime for its refusal to cooperate in an investigation regarding the obstruction of agency inspectors.

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Tehran has repeatedly insisted that it has already provided all relevant information, but experts believe that the only information that was made available is that which supports explanations of nuclear effects, which are not Itcredible.isclear that issues related to the IAEA investigation will not be difficult to resolve if Tehran is seriously committed to cooperating with it. This is ironic given that a senior adviser to the Iranian regime›s negotiating team used the same language in an interview with Al Jazeera. In addition to claiming that Iran›s stated concerns are «not difficult to resolve,» Mohammad Marandi described these fears as «based on past abuses by the United States and «Tehran has used the phrase many times amid many delays in the negotiation process, but now as then, the «small political decision» in question appears to be the decision to simply capitulate to Iran›s demands.»

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This handout photo taken and released on December 2021 ,27 by the EU delegation in Vienna - EEAS shows representatives attending a meeting of the joint commission on negotiations aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal in Vienna, Austria. (AFP).

to this finding, indicating in its draft that it would not oppose closing the investigation as long as Iran had provided credible answers to outstanding questions about the source of the nuclear traces found by the International Atomic Energy Agency at the four sites that Tehran did not disclose.

emphasized that the Iranian regime has continued to accelerate its nuclear activities in provocative directions, using a strategy that is in fact nuclear blackmail to enforce the lifting of financial sanctions without the associated bargaining.

“If Iran wants these sanctions to be lifted, it will have to change its basic behavior. It will need to change the dangerous activities that led to these sanctions in the first place,” he Butsaid.Iran will never «change its basic behavior,» as long as the West›s approach to the Iranian regime is submission, not firmness.

«If the Americans and Europeans are able to satisfy the concerns of the Iranian lawyers and negotiators, it is over,» Marandi said, adding that they «only need to make a small political Tehrandecision.»has

Regime officials argued that once such a response was given, an agreement could be accepted after an additional two or three days of negotiations.

«Regime officials argued that once such a response was given, an agreement could be accepted after an additional two or three days of negotiations.»

Mohammad Marandi, an advisor to the Iranian negotiating team at the nuclear talks. (Supplied)

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price speaks during a news conference in Washington, U.S. March 2022 ,10. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Pool via REUTERS.

27 26/08/22s

So far, Western signatories have ruled out such a capitulation, and on Monday, US State Department spokesman Ned Price once again condemned Tehran for its «unacceptable demands» and emphasized that «what can be negotiated over the past 16 or 17 months has been Moreover,negotiated.»Price

the European Union.»

used the phrase many times amid many delays in the negotiation process, but now as then, the «small political decision» in question appears to be the decision to simply capitulate to Iran›s demands.

American Debate: Guantanamo Trials vs. “Beatles” Trials

During last week’s court proceeding in Alexandria, a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, Sudanese-British El Shafee Elsheikh was sentenced to eight life imprisonment terms for his role as part of the “Jihadi Beatles,” who were members of Islamic State (IS) and slaughtered Americans in Syria. At the same time, a news report from the US Guantanamo prison in Cuba, where about 50 terrorist suspects have been waiting justice for about 20 years, repeated the endless legal arguments that have been made all this Thattime. was the contrast between two ways the US has been con ducting its Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), particularly the treatment of captured terrorist suspects.

Third, Marsha Mueller, mother of Kayla Mueller, the humanitar ian volunteer who was arrested and killed by IS in Syria, criticiz ing the GWOT for spreading “anger and fear.”

Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Washington’s George town University, specializing in terrorism and counterterrorism, compared those civil trials to the military ones in Guantanamo which he described as “a stain on our democracy.”

Current Challenges and Promising Solutions

Last week’s sentencing of Elsheikh followed an earlier one, in the same court, of his fellow “Beatle,” British-Ghanian Alexanda TheyKotey.were the first and only terrorists to be tried in a civilian court. The contrast with Guantanamo military trials was clear. While the crimes committed, or said to be committed, by all of them took place during the last 20 years, the debate in the US has been not only about the differences between civilian and military courts, but, also, about the seemingly never ending GWOT.

Diane Foley: “Face to Face”: “When I sat down to talk to Kotey, we looked at each other and said ‘hello’. It was not an easy thing to do, but it was important. Jim would have wanted me to do it …

The return of the Taliban as rulers of Afghanistan and the return of Al-Qaeda to Kabul, as shown in the presence of its now-dead leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and the expanding attacks by violent Islamists in faraway places, from Mali to Mozambique, show the never-imagined Jihadism spread, and, consequently, the continu ation of the GWOT.

By Mohammad Ali Salih – Washington

Following are excerpts from three American opinions about how to deal with captured terrorist suspects: endless, and partly-secret, military tribunals, or open and short civilian trials:

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First, Diane Foley, mother of James Foley who was slaughtered by IS, described confronting Kotey during his trial, and argu ing that the civilian court, while bringing no final closure to her son’s death, was a result of her years-old campaign to punish his Second,killers.

The hours I spent with him were, for me, an affirmation of faith, forgiveness and a commitment to what has now become my life’s work …

In that small room as I stared at him, I felt more ‘even’ with the man convicted of helping to kill my son. He was still rather frightening to me, but, of course, since I knew I was safe, and he could harm me no longer, I had some power.

28 26/08/22

But he never said sorry. He was somber and respectful towards me and talked about remorse, but never apologized …

The constitutional right to a speedy and fair trial—as stipulat ed by the Sixth Amendment—was rigorously applied by Judge T.S. Ellis III throughout the court proceedings that lasted (for Elsheikh) two-and-a-half weeks and heard testimony from thirtyfive prosecution witnesses …

The first conclusion to be drawn from the Beatles trials in Alex andria is also the most important: Americans so rarely get to see an international terrorist brought to justice here in the homeland.

Hopefully, in the future, our government will do like so many others did, and get their people home. Not leave them in there until they are killed by the terrorists. Needless to say, the terrorists seek to divide, to scare, to hurt, and to break us apart. But they fail when we choose light over darkness—when peaceful justice prevails over anger and fear …”

Bruce Hoffman: “Guantanamo’s Contrast”: “Beyond the immediate im pact on these terrorists and the families of their victims, though, the trials [of Kotey and Elsheikh] have signifi cant implications for U.S. counterterrorism, the ability of the justice system to pros ecute international terrorists, and the future of U.S. hos tage policy …

And the trial showcased the power of the American justice sys tem to prosecute and incarcerate such individuals.

They were the first and only terrorists to be tried in a civilian court. The contrast with Guantanamo military trials was clear.

29 26/08/22

The trials thus stood in marked contrast to the futile two-decadelong effort to bring to justice Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and the other terrorists incarcerated at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A total of some 800 persons have been imprisoned at the facility since 2002. Fewer than forty currently remain there …

It is a stain on our democracy …”

When I stood up to leave, I said to him that I hope at some point we could both forgive one another. He looked at me confused and said: ‘I don’t have to forgive you for anything.’ My plea was grounded in my Catholic faith: I felt like, as people, none of us are perfect. We all do things we regret. If I hate the terrorists, they have won. They will continue to hold me captive because I am not willing to be different to the way they were to my loved one. We must pray for the courage to be the opposite …

I wish our countries had worked together and brought our sons and daughters home instead of having to spend so much time on bringing accountability after their murders. But, it is better than nothing …”

Marsha Mueller: “Anger and Fear”: “My husband Carl and I are the parents of Kayla Mueller, have not given up looking for our daughter’s remains. We just met with FBI Director Christopher Wray who told us: ‘We are not going to stop until we find Kayla.’

I wanted Kotey to be confronted with the horror of what he did, and to hear about the man he murdered, the eldest of my five children …

Our daughter was 26-year-old on a humanitarian mission in Turkey in August 2013 when ISIS kidnapped her after she crossed the Syrian border. In February 2015, U.S. officials con firmed that she died while in ISIS custody. Elsheikh declined to speak about her during his trial. He was obviously cold with no remorse throughout the whole trial. And I think he believes he was doing the right thing … Our government mishandled our daughter’s and other hostages’ situations. Former President Obama had every opportunity to bring Kayla home during the 18 months she was held captive.

Kotey listened quietly and, then, also talked about his own family. He said had been praying to his God for forgiveness. He shared a picture of his family. He has some young children whom he will probably never see again. It made me realize how much he has lost by following hatred and propaganda. It made me pity him …

None have been accorded anything even resembling the due pro cess that unfolded in Alexandria in late March through mid-April.

Talk of Annihilation and Demographic Suicide from Vietnam to Germany

“SAMBO GENERATION” IN KOREA

BySSamaMamdouh

El-Sheikh

Toward the end of the eighteenth century (1798), an English priest named Thomas Robert Malthus issued a warning that be came one of the most popular and influential quotes of the modern era when he stated in his famous treatise on the relationship of population growth to resources: Population growth follows a geo metric progression, whereas resource growth follows a numerical progression, giving rise to the term “Malthusianism,” which was one of the most common theories for “scarcity” in contemporary political and economic theories.

Today, just over two centuries after Malthusian’s cry, the world is filled with warnings that humanity is on the verge of extinction because the “geometric progression” of population growth has been disrupted and then broken?! And, if we define the elderly as those over the age of 65 today, they may become recruited as young people in the year 3000!

THE INVERSE DEMOGRAPHIC PATH At the turn of the century, the United Nations warned European countries and Japan of the consequences of continuing to reject the North American and Australian models of encouraging mass immigration as a solution to the aging problem, not after two cen turies, but rather “right now.” It’s worth noting that the United Nations referred to these changes as “the new world population order.” The European Commission stated at the end of March 2006 that Europeans should take the issue seriously and “take advantage of the current economic recovery to find a solution to demographic aging that may cause a collapse in the growth and lifestyle of Europeans.”

The elderly, particularly in the West, have become a large eco nomic factor, with the purchasing power of the healthy aging sec tor reaching $26.5 trillion in 2022. The Sharjah Research, Tech nology, and Innovation Park revealed the world’s largest database of healthy aging, which includes more than 50,000 companies. It is thus not a matter of silent numbers, but of indicators of hu manity’s - or at least a large portion of humanity’s - future, as well as a forerunner of the impending collapse of a “way of life.”

30 26/08/22 ociety

The United Nations has previously warned of a demographic shift that will have far-reaching consequences for all aspects of hu man life, including economic growth, savings, consumption, and labor markets, as well as the structure of the family, housing, en vironment, health, education, and political aging, which will alter voting patterns and the means of parliamentary representation, ultimately leading to the formation of governments. Consumer tastes, social values, and images of literary and artistic production are all valid topics to discuss.

Have we placed too much faith in Malthus’ statement?

After 1982, there was indifference, and at the turn of the century, protests began. Employees in France went on strike in August 2003 as a result of changes in the pension system that forced citizens to work for longer periods of time. It was proposed at The world is old in the “New World Population Order”!

According to a new UN re port, while the world popu lation continues to grow at a slower rate, the rate of population aging is increas ing, despite a clear decline in fertility (DPA).

the time that roughly a quarter of the French workforce would work an additional two and a half years to receive a full pen sion. Then Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffran warned that due to an aging population, current pensions would be cut in half in twenty years.

The phrase “younger than ever” has recently gained currency in Germany. By the end of 2021, one in every ten Germans (8.3 million) will be between the ages of 15 and 24, compared to more than 18 million over the age of 65. The current workerretiree balance indicates that approximately 4.5 workers provide one retired pension, and this rate is expected to decrease to two for each retiree by 2050. According to the Organization for Eco nomic Cooperation and Development, there are 37 pensioners for every 100 participants in Germany, and this figure is expected to rise steadily to around 58 by 2050. One of the phenomenon’s distorted ideas is that if the elderly is a citizen of a wealthy de veloped country, he automatically receives a generous pension and retirement benefits. A study released by the Ministry of the Family in December 2021, however, refutes this misconception.

It’s worth noting that the United Nations referred to these changes as “the new world population order.

One of the forecast’s limitations is that the phenomenon is global - in general - with a specificity associated with industrial socie ties and cultures with a more liberal individualist tendency. The World Health Organization projections in October 4, 2021, indi cated that the world’s population over the age of 60 will rise and grow by 34% between 2020 and 2030. Today, those aged 60 and up outnumber children under the age 31 26/08/22

One of the variables of this framework is that social security systems for retirees are primarily funded by the working popula tion. This system simply means that those who work now pay pensions to retirees in the same way that retirees did in the past when they were still working. In the United States, there are three workers for every retiree. The Organization for Economic Coop eration and Development predicts that the retirement age will rise to 66.1 years in 20 of 38 countries, and the organization believes that aging is more dangerous than the pandemic.

In Germany, one-quarter of the elderly are impoverished. Today (August 2022), less than two decades after the French pro tests, Germany is debating raising the retirement age to seventy!!

The term “demographic suicide” entered the political lexicon of Europe in 2018, when a report predicted that the continent would lose 49 million workers by 2040. There is only a scattering of facts, the implications of which can be understood - and then only within a certain framework.

FAILURE TO PREDICT DISASTER

ocietyS

Child allowances are ineffective if the underlying causes that lead people to reject marriage and childbearing are not addressed.

In November of 2019, according to a BBC report regarding a UN study, South Korea’s population will peak in 2024, then decline, and by 2100, the country’s population will be around 29 million, the same as it was in 1966. Many elderly people lack financial resources and are embarrassed to seek assistancegovernment(DPA).

of five, and by 2050, those aged 60 and up are expected to out number those aged 15-24, with approximately 65 percent of older people living in low- and middle-income countries.

This shift is part of a growing social phenomenon in South Korea known as the “sambo generation,” which refers to the act of let ting go of things such as relationships, marriage, and children. The statistics reflect a cultural shift that has never been seen be fore. Marriage rates among 25 to 29-year-olds were 23% in 2015, compared to 90% in 1970. Surprising figures for a large propor tion of Japanese people’s aversion to sex, even within marriage, are one Accordingexample.toone expert, Karl Minzner, a senior researcher in China studies and professor at Fordham Law School, one of the lessons learned from attempting to change demographic reality through incentives alone is that “family-friendly labor policies have no value if people do not use them, and they make no sense.”

The release of the 2022 United Nations World Population Pros pects report revealed that China’s population began to decline this year (ten years earlier than was predicted in 2019), and that In dia’s population will surpass China’s population in 2023, that is, seven years earlier than the 2019 forecast.

Given that East Asia’s great economic success has plunged sev eral countries into a dark demographic tunnel with indicators far worse than those of the Western demographic transition, Singa pore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wrote an article in Foreign 32 26/08/22

The change is not limited to the perception of marriage or child bearing, but that a career almost completely replaces a man, and according to a BBC report ( November 12, 2019), women choose to have fewer children, and some even choose to stay away from romantic relationships completely, “and abstain from any legal marriage relationships or even casual relationships, in order to obtain an independent life and jobs!!”

One of the most important determinants of the projection is that actual aging rates over the last quarter century have been faster than predictive models in many cases, implying that the phenom enon is more complex than the statistical models used to predict its future. For example, in China, the rapid decline in fertility has forced major revisions to official estimates of how quickly people are aging, and when the Chinese government released its popu lation development plan in 2016, it predicted that China’s total population would not begin to decline until 2030.

One of the projection’s limitations is that some East Asian socie ties are more influenced by Western lifestyle than many Western societies, where change follows patterns, some extreme and some strange. South Korea’s population, for example, is aging faster than that of any other developed country.

The guest workers have become citizens, whose religions, fash ion, and tastes in general serve as the fuel for an ideological strug gle. This discord confirms the correctness of what was advised by the United Nations years ago, viz., that Europe absorb the AngloSaxon lesson in its pluralism and acceptance of immigrants, so that the European peoples, together with these immigrants, repair the “great demographic rift” that threatens the future of Europe.

The United Nations warns European countries and Japan to encourage immigration in order to address their aging Europeanpopulations.Statistics Office study from 2003: In the last decade, the number of marriages in the EU has fallen by 15% and the annual rate of increase recorded at the start of the year is 0.4%, with im migration accounting for three-quarters of the increase.

At the same time, the extreme sensitivity to “identity badges” in the public sphere has put Europe in an economic bind - its roots are cultural - with so-called “guest workers,” to whom Europe opened its doors after WWII to rebuild the continent’s economy.

The map of demographic danger clearly shows two major pat terns. There is a European pattern in which conflicts between values and interests exacerbated the crisis. In one sense, what Europeans are now facing is the result of a Western lifestyle that has nourished an extreme individualist tendency in the people of these societies. One of the unchanging cosmic norms is that increasing the value of pleasure in a society where individuality is the most important value leads inevitably to a reluctance to marry, so that the nuclear family itself disappears after the extended family has disappeared.

Beginning in the 2000s, Chinese academics began to express concerns about the long-term demographic consequences of these policies, including significant imbalances in male-to-female ratios at birth as a result of aborting female fetuses due to the communist system’s totalitarian regulations. It took researchers ten years to confirm the fertility decline, and another decade for the Chinese government to accept the scientists’ findings.

In 1989, Japan’s fertility rate fell to its lowest level, and what became known as the “shock of 1.57” pushed a child. In her unvarnished novel “Children of Men,” British novelist Phyllis Dorothy James predicted in 1992 that the world would be without any newborn by 2021, “which means the extinction of Januarymankind.”2000:

SINO-EUROPEAN FINAL SCENE

Yi Fuxian, a demographer specializing in Chinese society, con tends that “since China’s economic miracle has been based largely on its inexhaustible labour force, the lack of population growth will be an inflection point in its economic model ... which may prevent China from ever overtaking the United States.” Ac cording to a 2020 census report from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, a third of China’s population will be retired in about a quarter-century. In addition, the large economic burden of pen sion fund budget deficits increased by 11.6 percent between 2014 and 2016, reaching $410 billion. Demography may play a larger role than expected in bringing the US-China rivalry to a painful end.

The Chinese pattern, on the other hand, demonstrates the dramat ic – even historical – effects that demographic change can have.

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In a society where the number of elderly people is growing, solutions are required to be able to finance retirement salaries and pensions in the future.

FACTS AND FIGURES

Affairs titled “The Endangered Asian Century.” In it, he warned of the “growing threat of demographic change, which poses an ominous threat” to Asia’s long-term prosperity.

November 2019 South Korea has one of the world’s lowest fertil ity rates, with an average of 1.1 children per woman (the global average is around 2.5).

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2015 Global Monitoring Report 2015/2016:

President Putin, December 2021: Demographic growth is one of Russia’s most pressing challenges.

ocietyS

A report by Eurostat of the European Commission, published in November 2019 by the American magazine Foreign Affairs: In 2050, 33% of the European population will be over the age of 60. US federal figures for 2020: The birthrate fell by 4%, resulting in the slowest population growth rate since 1979. The number of states with more deaths than births increased from 5 in 2019 to 25 in According2020.to a March 2021 study, 40% of Belgian households may have only one member by 2070. United Nations, October 2021: The number of people over the age of 60 will rise by 34% between 2020 and 2030. People aged 60 and up now outnumber children under the age of five. According to a study published in December 2021, one-quarter of the elderly in Germany are impoverished.

The Chinese government abolished its strict one-child policy in 2016, then began new policies to encourage childbearing in 2021, but the experiences of its neighbors indicate that these measures are unlikely to succeed. According to statis tics, China’s one-child policy has resulted in an elderly society (Getty Images).

Protests occur in France over the extension of the retirement age in August 2003.

The German Central Statistics Office warned in April 2015 that the sharp decline in the number of working-age women and men in 2060 will be offset by a similarly large increase in the number of elderly pensioners.

February 2018 Research: By 2050, Europe’s population will have declined by 49 million people of working age. In November of 2019, according to a BBC report regarding a UN study, South Korea’s population will peak in 2024, then decline, and by 2100, the country’s population will be around 29 million, the same as it was in 1966.

The German Central Statistics Office warned in April 2015 that Germany’s population would fall from 80.8 million in 2013, ac cording to the last census, to 73.1 million, or 67.6 million, in October2060. Population Change and Development Goals (Peru). The world is undergoing a major demographic transition that will reshape economic devel opment over the next several decades.

The Chinese government abolished its strict one-child policy in 2016, then began new policies to encourage childbearing in 2021, but the experiences of its neighbors indicate that these measures are unlikely to succeed. According to the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs, there were 230 million elderly people in China at the end of 2016, account ing for 16.7 percent of the total population. The annual cost of caring for retirees is $410 billion.

December 2021: America’s population growth rate will fall to one-tenth of one percent in 2021, the lowest rate in the country’s Southhistory.Korea formed a task force in June 2022 to address the country’s declining population. People aged 65 and up made up 14% of the population. According to Statistics Korea, the working-age population will fall by 35% to 24.19 million in 2050.

According to a UN report published in July 2022, the global pop ulation growth rate fell below 1% annually in 2020 for the first time since 1950. The global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950.

Canada stated in April 2022 that “never before has the number of people approached this high before retirement age,” with more than one in every five workers (21.8 percent) approach ing retirement age. The mandatory retirement age of 65 years.

The Economist, December 2021: By 2050, one in every six peo ple in the world will be over 65, up from one in every eleven in 2019, and the population of 55 countries is expected to decline between now and 2050.

With the world’s aging population, Japan has the largest market for goods and services required by the elderly over the age of 50, in cluding travel and leisure services (Alamy).

Statistics Canada stated in April 2022 that there will be one mil lion vacancies in Canada by late 2021. The value of the healthy aging sector in 2022, according to Shar jah Research, Technology, and Innovation Park, is $26.5 trillion in August According2022.toa May 2022 University of Washington study, 151 of the world’s 195 countries will see population declines by 2050. 35 26/08/22

The cover of a book about Japan’s graphicdemocrisis.

August 2022: Vietnam is one of the world’s fastest aging coun tries, and it will be an aging society by 2035.

After Japan, Italy has the highest life expectancy in the industrial ized world in August 2022. Childbirth in Sweden has reached a 20-year low in August 2022. According to the United Nations World Population Prospects Report for 2022, China’s population began declining ten years earlier than expected, and India’s population will surpass China’s seven years sooner than Southexpected.Korea’s working-age population is expected to decline by 35% over the next 30 years, due to fewer births and a societal Statisticsaging.

The OECD predicts that the retirement age will rise to 66.1 years in 20 of the 38 OECD countries.

By Luisa Markides

36 26/08/22 Emigration: Where

For as long as humans have existed, there have always been mi gration movements. The longing for new horizons has been in most of us. People who consider leaving their birth country to move to a new continent are increasing. They choose to take this huge step in their life to leave everything behind to relocate and venture into a new world. If at the beginning of the 19th Century, emigra tion would usually have been a decision which would affect the traveller’s whole life, nowadays someone can be back to their homeland within hours. The reasons why people decide to move abroad are different in nature and can vary given to the different circumstances. Some might search for a change or a life chal lenge, for professional opportunity, to be re-joined with someone they love. While others might be forced to escape their country because of difficult circumstances or existential threats, such as wars, economic, political or religious reasons and are searching for a place for their safety. I would like to bring closer a personal story of one young Aus tralian girl called Ivy, who left her homeland at the sweet age of 21. It was a series of events starting at her birth that brought Ivy to the other side of the world, to London. Her father was born in Northern Ireland and happened to be a British citizen, emigrating to Australia with his parents and five sisters in the 1970’s. This made Ivy’s own journey to Europe a lot more straight forward and flexible than most, as she was eligible for British citizenship before even having set foot in the U.K. She had spent what would now be referred to as a ‘gap year’ teaching English in central China, returning a year later. Unsure about her future and without knowing about her next move, she only felt that the pull for travel and adventure was strong and wanted to follow it.

Ivy met a friend who would spend his Australian summers in Austria skiing, travelling around Europe and returning for the Aussie ski season (fun fact: Australia receives more snow cover age than Switzerland). So she decided to try out a ski season in Austria as well. But after the season was over, she travelled to London to visit a childhood friend who had just finished an exchange program in Spain and was living with her British cousins. Ivy’s plan was to get some temporary office work and save to see some more of Europe. They took a few short trips together, but very quickly her Aus tralian dollar dwindled against the British pound and she found herself looking for something more permanent. Life sometimes has different plans for us. So, she found a junior position in an office. Soon after “I met my now husband… three kids, a dog and 16 years later… the rest is history,” she said with a smile. Dreams are and Never Finite

Forever Changing

A Look Into Story of One Young Australian Girl Report

When asked what the feeling was, while sitting on the airplane from Brisbane nearly two decades ago, she said that she was excited to meet up with her friend. “I remember my preconceived image of London be ing like everything I had seen in the movies… Paddington bear. Buckingham palace. Bobbies in their hats and London Bridge (which, as it happens, isn’t the pretty one- that’s Tower However,Bridge).” her idyllic image of England was slightly different than the reality. She got off the plane and the first thing she noticed were police everywhere with machine guns. This was early 2006, shortly after the 2005 London bombings, so every one was on high alert. It was quite daunting for her at first. Ivy’s grandparents had told her not to take the bus or the underground, which, she quickly learned, would have been completely impos sible, as this is the main source of transport for London.

With a sense of bittersweet emotion, Ivy states that “When you leave and say goodbye, and you are surrounded with so much support and love, you take that love and support with you wherever you go. You carry it in your heart and that hap piness reassures you that you bring your happiness with you.”

Credit: Unsplash

Luckily, thanks to modern technology, Australia and Europe seem to be just around the corner when video calling between the continents. Some people, regardless of the time you have spent together, touch hearts and remain connected forever. Same for homelands… there is no place such as home…

After building a life in London for over 16 years and giving birth and raising three children in one of the biggest cities in Europe, creating a rather happy and balanced life in London despite the chaos, they decided it was time for another change. This time... by taking the journey back home. Many factors have led the family to decide to return to Aus tralia. There are so many Australian songs that refer to Aus tralia as being the place you will always call ‘home,’ regard less of where you have been in the world. Many Aussies call it a rite of passage to spend some time abroad. Not all of them stay as long Ivy did, but if you’ve spent enough time in another ‘home’ away from home to form meaningful connections, you will relate to the feeling of forever having half of your heart somewhere else.

It was definitely not an easy decision, but one that Ivy and her husband weighed carefully, and factored in the ages of their children, the political and economic climate, and of course, their aging parents. Having been through the shared experience of Covid, every one will relate to having a moment of revaluating their lives.

Then, at the beginning of summer 2022, Ivy’s life as planned took her in some completely unexpected directions. “If you are open to receiving what life has to offer, you will never be disappointed,” Ivy reflects. “I would say, my dreams are for ever changing and never finite.”

When asked what she was hoping to find in Europe she said that she was really hoping to have fun, make some money, and experience all that London had to offer. She found the cost of London at the time was incredibly prohibitive, so she was a little bit disappointed at first. “It definitely took some adjust ing. I was quite a young, sheltered and naive Australian girl and, looking back, a little bit entitled in my expectations. Even though I spoke the same language … the culture does have some similar parallels, there are definite, and often times nu anced differences that can take years to detect and pinpoint.”

Ivy and her husband with their three children have by now arrived well in faraway Australia. “Still settling in so haven’t quite figured out my feelings about being here yet. Just enjoy ing the first few days. Lots of reverse culture shocks”

Some people realized they needed to adjust their work/life balance, others discovered the value of having outdoor space, some bought a longed-for pet… “We decided to pull the rip cord on something we had discussed but put off for many, many years. Even if it’s only to see how we go.” Preparing to depart from London was not something she would want to relive in a hurry. “We had a lifetime of ‘stuff’ packed into a home. A home we had brought our three babies home from hospital to” she recalled. The five airline tickets were just the tip of the iceberg. They had to decide what to keep, what to donate, what to ship, find someone to move into their London home, and how to get their five-month-old pet home. The logistics around that were a feat in itself. As soon as they had booked the tickets, Ivy started slowly but decisively work ing through room by room, sometimes ruthlessly culling all the things they had acquired over the years, so that it would make things easier when it came to packing. The family hired a company to come in and do all the packing. That’s not even mentioning the emotional preparation which was the hardest part of all. Saying goodbye to their friends and community was completely gut-wrenching. Thoughtful Ivy says: I think in the weeks leading up to our departure, there wasn’t a single day that went by that I wondered whether or not we were doing the right thing. Saying goodbye to the kid’s amazing school and all of their incredible friends, parents we had grown close to. Friends who we had been with over all the years in London who had become like family. Being able to pop in with a flat white to our lovely neighbours after the school run. Running into families in the park. It really had become the dream in terms of community”

37 26/08/22

If at the beginning of the 19th Century, emigration would usually have been a decision which would affect the traveller’s whole life, nowadays someone can be back to their homeland within hours

Definitely, this is the most important element of spiritual nourishment that feeds the heart and is reflected in the feeling of happiness and relief. It is remarkable that Sufism is an easy portal for those who are seeking refuge with Allah from insurmountable crises. In such predicaments, a person feels powerless asking for help from Allah. This situation was described by the poet Mohamed Iqbal in “Hadith El-Rouh” (Shikwa), and in the religious poems of Ahmed Shawqi such as “Nahg El Borda” in which he praises the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) in a pastiche of Al-Busiri’s poem. “Salou Qalbi” (Ask my Heart) is another Arabic poem by Shawqi that was sung by Umm Kulthum. It abounds with heartfelt Sufi meanings, particularly the line that describes the worldly life: “I collected from its gardens flowers and thorns And I tasted its honey and resin drink But I have not seen better justice than that of Allah, and I have not seen other doors but that leads to Him» That is the utmost degree of submission, asceticism, and divine love which speaks to the mind and the heart. Hence, the person who keeps wondering will always go back and say “ask my heart.”

The decisive role of religion is to protect the soul and the heart from blindness to Allah’s gifts that were designed to serve human needs. Humans are created into a life of toil, so it is not surprising that worshipping Allah has turned into task of habit. This has taken out the effect of faith on the heart and missed the happiness provided for the worshipper in the form of peace of mind. Since the early ages, people have been looking for guidance provided by the monotheistic religions, a head of which is the Islamic faith, which gathers all that a person needs for spiritual nourishment, and offers all the answers to questions about creed, jurisprudence, prophets’ life stories, morals and conduct. Philosophy came later after Islamic conquests and the expansion of the Islamic state with more non-Arabs adopting Islam. Meantime, Sufism has been closer to a popular religion given its emotional appeal, but it has been tarnished by some aspects that were described by Ibn Taymiyyah as charlatanism.

Imam Al-Qushayri was correct when he said in his Risala (epistle) that Sharia precedes truth, which is reflected in righteous behavior and good relationships among individuals of Muslim community, and between Muslim society and other non-Muslim neighbors. Hence, we should focus our attention on dealings and transactions with people, and abstain from looking into people’s belongings. Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Abdullah Al-Farghani said, “If a person is truly in need of Allah, he will be truly enriched by Allah.” That is the peak of belief and the correct meaning of putting trust in Allah.

Ask My Heart

38 26/08/22 pinion

oThedecisiveroleofreligionistoprotectthesoulandtheheartfromblindnesstoAllah’sgiftsthatweredesignedtoservehumanneeds.

What is also well known is the Indian influence on Islamic Sufism. In his studies of comparative religions, Al-Biruni compared the late Sufi concept of “the unity of existence” with the Vedanta tradition as well as the poems of Rumi and the Gita Govinda. However, there is still some of the pure and true Sufism that we direly need today, as the Muslim world witnesses weakness and confusion while there is a fierce atheist attack against religion, and political and commercial abuse of faith. In addition, the Muslim world fell into the hands of colonists for long decades, which resulted in divided borders stained with blood and wired fence, and in the loss of the first Muslim qibla and third holy mosque in Jerusalem. After the dominance of Google, young people have become perplexed and missed the tranquility that our ancestors had. Speeches of imams and stories of the Quran’s miracles by fame seekers are no longer sufficient. We need more than ever to make our religious discourse appeal to the heart, which is available in true Sufism that is totally distinct from the charlatanism described by Ibn Taymiyyah, and from the philosophy detailed by Al-Biruni. It is no longer appropriate to classify Muslims into people of Zahiriya (outward) school and people of Batiniyya (inward) school. The one who doesn’t have outward religion won’t have an inward. Having an “inward” that is also common in extremist, spiritless, mentally retarded, and intellectually deviating people is inappropriate for a true Muslim.

Gamal Abd El-Maboud

In a globalized world where social media platforms are prevailing and adding to life’s complexity, humans are left prey to invisible stress that snaps at our minds, breaks our hearts, and distracts our thoughts except for those who are endowed with a spiritual shield that protects their minds from going astray and their soul from getting lost due to an instinctive control over minds and hearts.

In fact, the roots of Sufism in Islamic history date back to the age of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). There lived people of Al-Suffah who were detached from life’s pleasures, that was their reality regardless of the myths circulated about them. Among them were Owais al-Qarani, Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, and Abu Darda who said he loved death in order to meet his God, loved poverty for the sake of modesty, and loved sickness as an atonement for his sins. As the Islamic nation expanded, the Iranian influence emerged, where some Sufis became linked with other schools, such as Suhrawardi’s link with Zoroastrianism, and Ibrahim ibn Adham’s link in his early life with Gautama Buddha. Notably, Ibn Adham classified Islamic asceticism (zuhd) into: (1) obligatory zuhd, which means to abstain from forbidden actions; (2) virtuous zuhd, which means to be disinterested in what is allowed; and, (3) zuhd for safety, which is to stay away from doubtful matters.

Sanna

2 A Weekly Political News Magazine www.majalla.com Issue 1919- August- 26/08/2022

Marin: The Youngest PM in the History of Finland

For her part, Marin has largely shrugged the whole episode off. It was just good clean fun, she argued, a 36-year-old woman enjoying a night out with friends. However, she did apolo gise for – and acknowledge as “inappropriate” - photos of two bare-chested partygoing women in Marin’s official residence that emerged days Inlater.some ways, she is on firm ground. Finns are proud of their modern head of government and of her attitude. One of the world’s youngest po litical leaders, she is married to Markus Raik konen, an investor and former football player, and together they have a four-year-old daugh ter. “I danced, sang, and partied, all perfectly legal things,” she said, defending herself from criticism from opposition parties.

Finland’s partying prime minister stands by her nightclub actions

42 26/08/22 piniono Dancing the night away publicly It seems a truism to say that as soon as

The resulting furore about Finnish PM Sanna Marin, 36, a wife and mother, has triggered all manner of debates, including how a public fig ure ought to behave in private and the extent to which public figures have a right to privacy. Some social media users have interpreted com ments heard in the video as references to drugs. No drugs, said Marin, adamantly.

Alongside the unproven suggestion of drugs, an element of scandal centred on Marin’s intimate ly close 4am dance with Olavi Uusivrta, a male Finnish pop star. He has since said that there is nothing to see here. “Hand-on-heart, we’re just friends, nothing happened”. Likewise, Sarin has said that they were just dancing, that’s all. So cial media users raised an eyebrow. Few took these protestations of innocence at face value. On issues such as this, the internet is at best sceptical, at worst cynical. If Marin’s midnight antics on a night off has the air of a sleazy tabloid story, that is not how she sees it. Drug use allegations are no laughing matter, she said. “I only drunk alcohol and par tied in a boisterous way. I consider these accu sations to be very serious. And although I think the demand that I take a drug test is unjust, for my own legal protection – and to clear up any doubts – I have taken a test.” She added that she had paid for it herself. It later came back Reactionnegative. to the story has at times bordered on the absurd, given that at its heart, this is a story about a young woman dancing and having the time of her life in a nightclub, like most peo ple her age. She is known for having a joyously open character. Indeed, it is part of who she is, who Finns voted for, something that is rightly Becelebrated.thatas it may, the Marin melee has not stopped people asking: where is the line be tween a politician’s private life and the public interest? If you are a public figure, or in a posi tion of authority, are you entitled to live youreverymonitoringwatchingbethepublicbecomessomeoneafigure,worldwillwatchingandclosely,theirstepByLuisaMarkides.

Just hours after Finland’s young prime minister set a Helsinki dancefloor alight, leaked footage of her partying the night away set the internet ablaze. She knew she was being filmed, she said, but trusted that the person filming it would keep it private. They didn’t. To expect such dis cretion in this day and age was probably naïve.

For Marin, who will live to fight another day, the scrutiny will take some getting used to. Like other leaders before her, she will have to find a way to cope with the intrusion into her private life, the lens into her downtime. She is right: what happens in private should stay private. Alas, as we know, the world does not always work like that. 26/08/22

According to the Markkula Center for Applied Eth ics, “everyone, including public figures, is entitled to privacy, but when a person goes into public life, he or she must understand that certain issues that might be considered private for a private individual can be come matters of reasonable public interest when that individual runs for office”. In that sense, it says, “be coming a public servant means putting the public’s interest ahead of your own”. Given this ethical definition, the public’s interest in Marin’s private life is understandable. It seems a tru ism to say that as soon as someone becomes a pub lic figure, the world will be watching and watching closely, monitoring their every step. In politics, there is usually an opposite party happy and willing to use it against you.

Prime Minister of Finland Sanna Marin holds a news conference after videos of her partying leaked into social media and sparked criticism earlier this week, in Helsinki, Finland : August 19, 2022. Lehtikuva/Roni Rekomaa via REUTERS .

For friendsawoman36-year-oldshegoodoff.wholeshruggedhaspart,herMarinlargelytheepisodeItwasjustcleanfun,argued,aenjoyingnightoutwith

43

Does it matter that we are discussing a woman, here?

life like anyone else, keeping private things private, or are you required to adhere to a kind of code of conduct in your downtime and behind closed doors? After all, the conduct of public figures is often their undoing.

The Markkula Center talks about politicians “prac ticing the virtues of honesty and trustworthiness in both personal and private life”, with “the personal be haviour of politicians a legitimate area of public con cern”. But, as Marin said, her Saturday night partying does not impair her ability to lead the country, nor does it compromise her integrity. If it did, she said, she would have resigned. As the debate wears on, Marin looks increasingly like the standard bearer of a new generation of politician, arguing successfully against those who say this shows she does not yet take the role of prime minister seri ously. In this, she has support from women around the world, many of whom have uploaded footage of them dancing in solidarity.

The UK’s Boris Johnson is one such ex ample, although the now famous parties he attended were during lockdown and therefore against his own rules. Marin’s partying broke no such edict.

It is certainly true that when thinking of role mod els we often think of men, in large part because we know so little about female role models who ought to be more celebrated. As Marin herself said to Vogue magazine in 2020: “In every position I have ever been in, my gender has always been the starting point, that I am a young woman.”

Many feel that when it is a woman who is in a posi tion of power, as opposed to a man, sympathy simply drains away. Likewise, they feel that a woman can be more exposed to negative press than a man might be.

A small piece of news with a profile pic ture of a person in a black coat appeared in the weekly Star a few weeks ago, and be low was a piece of news saying that actor Jack Nicholson was seen leaving a store in Manhattan and setting off in a car that was waiting for him. This may or may not be true. The person who took the picture must have taken it in a hurry and may have respected the famous actor’s wish not to have taken another one or maybe it was not Nicholson at all. But in any case, Nicholson’s disappearance from any forum or event and the lack of news from him is a question that preoccu pies the minds of many who want to know what happened to the three-time Oscar win ning actor who was considered - rightlyone of the most important actors that cin ema has produced.

• Is it true that he has Alzheimer’s?

Where Did Jack Nicholson Disappear and Why?

• Where does he live now? And who super vises his needs?

• Why did he not officially announce his retirement?

• Were the financial returns from his last films after “The Departed” in 2006 a reason for his decision to stop acting?

There is no definitive answer to any of these questions, but the interest is only the result of the high esteem in which he is held by filmmakers, audiences, and critics alike. Nobody asks, with the same degree of in terest and determination to find answers, where Cameron Diaz is, or what is the lat est on Josh Hartnett and what Gene Hack man is doing these days or why Daniel Day Lewis decided to disappear altogether? Not the same heat and interest. But there are suggestive signs that Nichol son’s disappearance was planned. The now 85-year-old said in an interview in 2013: “I have the brain of an accounting scientist. I won’t work until the day I die. I’m no long er motivated. I used to have motivation. Now no. I have no reason to show up at all.” Indeed, he has not made a performance in any movie since he starred in “How Do You Know” in 2010. That movie was a romantic comedy which was promoted by Columbia and financed with a budget of 120 million Unfortunately,dollars. the movie did not bring in more than 48 million dollars. That was Ni

Vast Stardom, Great Successes and Then Long Absence

44 26/08/22

By Mohammed Rouda –

HollywoodJackNickolson Art

• Why did Nicholson decide to retire in the first place?

Some of the questions that have been asked since his sudden absence was noted ten years ago are:

The artist is always looking for incentives that make him ask himself to give more, and most likely here is that Nicholson, given that his recent films are devoid of any ar tistic value, may have found the motive to Lookingstop. at the last fifteen years of his career we find that his good commercial success is displayed in another film by James L. Brooks is “As Good as it Gets” in 1997. Af ter that, Nicholson was seen in only seven films, including “How You Know.”

cholson’s last act on screen, after which Nicholson disappeared and is still hidden

45 26/08/22

The years from 2001 to 2010 witnessed his brilliance in talent again, as shown before by his films throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties. This was embodied in three wonderful films: “The Pledge” by Sean Penn (2001), “About Schmidt” by Alexan der Payne (2002), and “The Departed” by Martin Scorsese (2006). His other films in that decade were of mixed value, though Nicholson remained the best talent in them: Peter Segal’s “Anger Man agement” (2013), “Something’s Gotta Give” by Nancy Meyers (2003) and “The Bucket List” by Rob Reiner (2007).

Nicholson rose to stardom early and man aged to maintain it, while it receded from some others of the same generation. At the time, on the cusp of the great change that Hollywood was going through in the sixties from the studio era to the era of art based on creative talents, Nicholson not only reached fame quickly, but also allowed himself to learn and engage in various affairs and as pects of cinema as an actual element. He was born in 1937, and his childhood was not happy. His father was a drunk and deserted the family when Jack was still ten years old. At the age of 17, he decided to become an actor while visiting California. He found a modest job at Metro Goldwyn Mayer as an office boy and used his spare time to prac tice acting. At the age of twenty-one he found him self in the lead of an independent film pro duced by Roger Corman, who was a studio in his own right. Many actors and direc tors worked with him from the late 1950s through the 1960s.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The names mentioned are among those who established their success in the last century, and the most famous of them until today is Martin Scorsese, who co-starred with Nicholson in “The Departed” along with a new generation, including Leonardo Di Caprio, Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg.

The Departed

The films Nicholson starred in at the time were a bunch of low-budget films. It is true that, although they were independent films, they were not intended for art but rather for commerce. This trend continued until he met Peter Fonda and Dennis Hop per, and the three participated in acting, writing and directing a youth-oriented film

First Success It is not that Nicholson’s history was not previously filled with artistic and commer cial successes. He is one of those who suc ceeded in changing the traditional image of a successful actor and giving it a richness that stems from a sense of choice and a de sire to embody roles with artistic incentives different from those that existed before in terms of making a performance that does not negate the self and that does not fear entering into the character.

Thetoday.commercial failure of “How Do You Know,” despite having James Brooks at the helm, a director who previously successful ly achieved “As Good as It Gets” in 1997, reinforces the belief that Nicholson realized that his name could no longer attract the masses of viewers as he once did. Brooks instructed him to stop while he was still on top among his peers, and he did it without hesitation.

As for the casts, a group of the most impor tant faces participated: Meryl Streep, Mar lon Brando, Robert De Niro, Robert Mitch um, Warren Petty, Shelley Duvall, Angelina Huston, Morgan Freeman and others. In the middle of the last decade, he added to the talents under whom he was directed, namely, Martin Scorsese, through the movie “The Departure.”

As for directors, he worked with the best: Hal Ashby, Stanley Kubrick, Sean Penn, James Brooks (good at the comedic level at least), Bob Raffelson, Roman Polanski, Mi los Forman, John Huston, and Elia Kazan.

With Raffelson (who passed away about a month ago), he appeared in three remarka ble and important films: “Five Easy Pieces” (1970), “King of Marvin Gardens” (1972) and “Wine and Blood” (1996).

46 26/08/22 called “Easy Rider.” On the surface, it’s a movie about hippies and bikers, like a wave of similar films, including some of Nicholson’s previous films, but at heart it is a social drama that criticizes the conservative attitude towards hippies, and if one reads the film well, one finds it also criticizing the attitude of hip pies to society. “Easy Rider” (1969) was the 17th film since Nicholson first appeared on screen in the regular, low-budget detective film “The Cry Baby Killer” in 1958. His entire film portfolio prior to “Easy Rid er” was founded by him as a young actor working in Hollywood, as were those of his friends Peter Fonda (son of conservative ac tor Henry Fonda) and Dennis Hopper. Therefore, “Easy Rider” reflected the con tribution of young filmmakers in guiding the direction of independent cinema, while at the same time activating the content that reveals the division of society between con servatives and liberals. Hopper and Fonda were the mainstays of this movie. Hopper directed it and costarred with Nicholson and Fonda, with the latter producing, writing and co-starring as well. Accompanied by Adults From this movie in the 1970’s until today, the actor has filled his history with handpicked remarkable roles. In the seventies, there were “Five Easy Pieces,” “Carnal Knowledge,” “The King of Marvin Gar dens,” “The Last Detail,” “Chinatown,” “The Passenger” and “One Flew Over Cuckoo’s Nest.” In the eighties, there were “The Shining,” “The Border,” “The Reds,” and “Prizzi’s Honor” as well as “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” In the nineties, there are “Hoffa,” “Wolf,” and “The Crossing Guard,” “Blood and Wine,” “The Pledge,” “About Schmidt,” among many other films.

In addition to the above, Nicholson won three Oscars in his life. The first in 1976 for his role in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and the second for Best Supporting Actor for “Terms of En dearment” in 1984, and the third for “The Best Possible” as Best Actor in 1998. He was also nominated for an Oscar on eight other occasions for eight various films. With the Best Directors What was behind Nicholson’s success to this extent? What were the main ingredients that enabled him to have three decades of enduring success? At the outset it must be observed that he was not the only one who warmly welcomed the sixth decade of the last century. By his side we do not forget Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, Al The

AShiningrt

Screening: Locarno International Film Festival

48 26/08/22 A weekly roundup of screenings at movie

around

Screenings: Cinemas

world NEW MOVIES By

DC LEAGUE OF SUPER PETS ★★ ◆

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón Genre: Fantasy [UK]

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★★★ ◆

Krypto (Dwayne Johnson) meets a group of street dogs to discuss the importance of rescuing Superman (what else?). The indomitable hero is captured by Lois Lane (Olivia Wilde), who imprisons him. Yes, Krypto and his men (I mean his dogs) have to rescue Superman in order to get back to fighting crime together. I wish they would change the order in which this film was made. Whatever the motivation for transforming this offshoot of DC’s tech and enter tainment industries, the result is an overabundance of characters and a scarcity of good ironies. The idea that Superman needs someone to get him out of jail and that the dog Krypto is the savior seems ridiculous, but a better movie could have been made, which the producer couldn’t have had the ambition to make.

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When the third instalment of the “Harry Potter” series was entrusted to a Mexi can film artist named Alfonso Cuarón in 2004, many in the media wondered what Cuarón might add to the series, which had been a huge success since its inception. The answer lies in the excellent treatment created by the director, which preserves the film’s dark rituals and fantasy. Today, you can confirm that it is one of the best Harry Potter films of all time by re-watching it in a new ver sion. Gary Oldman is a villain who has escaped from Azkaban and is out to kill Harry Potter. The visuals are good, and the effects are smooth, going beyond the script on which the film is based to tell its story.

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Directed by Sorayos Prapapan Genre: Dark Comedy [Thailand]

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A cinema that is limited to what new director Sorayos Prapapan has to offer in that the scenes are shot flat. There is no art in deciding how the image will deal with the subject, but the director is content with one treatment, with no excep tions. The camera in this case is a photograph. Total long shots. Medium for a few people, with no shadows or attempt at sophistication. This comedy begins with irony, as Arnold (Korbanai Mark Dautzenberg) provides a first impression of himself as a good and different student, but otherwise he will be paid for as sistance in cheating. theaters the Mohammed Rouda Art

Gulf Screenings

ARNOLD

Directed by Sam J. Levine, Jared Stern Genre: Cartoons [US]

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HARRY

Final Judgment: Smiles that are scattered and easily forgotten POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

★★★★ ◆

Final Judgment: A good opportunity to restore history IS A MODEL STUDENT

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world NEW MOVIES By

Krypto (Dwayne Johnson) meets a group of street dogs to discuss the importance of rescuing Superman (what else?). The indomitable hero is captured by Lois Lane (Olivia Wilde), who imprisons him. Yes, Krypto and his men (I mean his dogs) have to rescue Superman in order to get back to fighting crime together. I wish they would change the order in which this film was made. Whatever the motivation for transforming this offshoot of DC’s tech and enter tainment industries, the result is an overabundance of characters and a scarcity of good ironies. The idea that Superman needs someone to get him out of jail and that the dog Krypto is the savior seems ridiculous, but a better movie could have been made, which the producer couldn’t have had the ambition to make.

Gulf Screenings

When the third instalment of the “Harry Potter” series was entrusted to a Mexi can film artist named Alfonso Cuarón in 2004, many in the media wondered what Cuarón might add to the series, which had been a huge success since its inception. The answer lies in the excellent treatment created by the director, which preserves the film’s dark rituals and fantasy. Today, you can confirm that it is one of the best Harry Potter films of all time by re-watching it in a new ver sion. Gary Oldman is a villain who has escaped from Azkaban and is out to kill Harry Potter. The visuals are good, and the effects are smooth, going beyond the script on which the film is based to tell its story.

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around

Directed by Sorayos Prapapan Genre: Dark Comedy [Thailand]

Directed by Sam J. Levine, Jared Stern Genre: Cartoons [US]

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Screenings: Cinemas

ARNOLD

Final Judgment: Smiles that are scattered and easily forgotten POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

Screening: Locarno International Film Festival

★★★★ ◆

48 26/08/22 A weekly roundup of screenings at movie

A cinema that is limited to what new director Sorayos Prapapan has to offer in that the scenes are shot flat. There is no art in deciding how the image will deal with the subject, but the director is content with one treatment, with no excep tions. The camera in this case is a photograph. Total long shots. Medium for a few people, with no shadows or attempt at sophistication. This comedy begins with irony, as Arnold (Korbanai Mark Dautzenberg) provides a first impression of himself as a good and different student, but otherwise he will be paid for as sistance in cheating. theaters the Mohammed Rouda Art

Final Judgment: A good opportunity to restore history IS A MODEL STUDENT

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HARRY

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Directed by Alfonso Cuarón Genre: Fantasy [UK]

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DC LEAGUE OF SUPER PETS ★★ ◆

★★★ ◆

Final Judgment: Revolves in on itself

HELLO, BOOKSTORE ★★ ◆

or average | ★★:

◆ International

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The plot is all too familiar—a black man (John Boyega) enters a bank with an explosive, threatening bank employees and customers. Of course, the goal is to make money, but the motivation is different. He is a former soldier who tried to get help from the army for his psychological problems after leaving the army and looking for work, but he failed on both counts.

Directed by A.B. Zax Genre: Recording [US] Screenings

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Burns, the owner of a large bookstore in a small town, is forced to close due to a lack of sales. However, the townspeople have begun collecting donations, and the bookstore is now open to the public. If the message was to discourage people from reading and buying books, that would have been preferable to the current film situation, which follows the owner of the bookstore as he sells through the gap of a partly closed window (the epidemic was spreading at the time of film ing, and no one would be allowed to enter his store), reads some of them, and talks on the phone several times.

The issue arises when the film loses control of events, and the situation revolves around a failed theft after the police have surrounded the location. The police appear unconcerned about endangering the lives of the detainees, and instead conducted the raid alone. There’s some suspense here, but it doesn’t last long.

Final Judgment: It is deserving of more than it is receiving.

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The film appears to be an excuse to present a single person’s dilemma rather than a broad social dilemma for no apparent reason.

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BREAKING ★★★ ◆

The film depicts aspects of life such as family, religion, and, of course, school rituals, but it fails to pique the viewer’s interest beyond curiosity.

Final Judgment: It almost worked, but it’s still good enough

Directed by Michael Polish Genre: Western [US] Gulf Screenings. This western is well-written and executed. There is a genuine desire to make a good Western film, despite the limited finan cial resources that cannot be overcome because the genre is not popular among viewers. It’s about a woman (Gina Carano) who is forced to stay alone with her infant child in an isolated house. A gang is attempting to enter the house. The first half of the film is about the events that led the family into the wilderness, and how the husband’s promise of a better future did not come true. The second half features an invasion by a gang that isn’t afraid of a lonely woman armed with an old rifle.

merits| ★★★: Good | ★★★★: Excellent | ★★★★★:

TERROR ON THE PRAIRE

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masterpiece

★★★ ◆

Final Judgment: This genre’s fans will enjoy it. Weak Mediocre with A

49 26/08/22 Ratings: ★

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Directed by Ani Damaris Corbin Genre: Thriller [US] Screenings

Culture

In the case of Salisbury, the grim mendacity was relieved a little by sheer inventiveness. Who could have predicted the interest they took in the spire of the cathedral? Or, for that matter, the antiquity of its clock? These days, none of the Kremlin’s excuses has the virtue of being so original. The big lie currently in vogue is at least as old as the Great Patriotic War. The Kremlin has been telling its people for years that there are Nazis in Ukraine, just like the ones they had to kill back in the Forties, and promising them a ‘world without fascism’.

Making Omelettes with Other People’s Eggs

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Whose Dream is this Nightmare?

By Bryn Haworth Not so long ago, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, made some very striking remarks on Italian television. According to the Guardian, he was asked ‘…how Russia could say it needed to “denazify” [Ukraine] when its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is Jewish. “As to [Zelensky’s] argument of what kind of nazification can we have if I’m Jewish, if I remember correctly, and I may be wrong, Hitler also had Jewish blood,” Lavrov said... “It doesn’t mean anything at all. We have for a long time listened to the wise Jewish people who say that the most rabid antisemites tend to be Jews. There is no family without a monster” (Guardian, 2 May 2022).

Entertaining as it is to be privy to the Foreign Minister’s off-thecuff proverbs, perhaps he should leave the generalisations to Leonid Tolstoy. I’m guessing even the Lavrov family acknowledge who their monster is. It’s hard to know where to start with the nastiness of our Sergey’s insinuations. They set the bar so low, you can only gasp at a feat of moral limbo dancing. Once he’d recovered from his unrestrained amusement, even his scumbag master had to apologise on his Foreign Minister’s behalf. Apologies are not things one immediately associates with Vladimir Putin, or with Russian diplomacy in general. Salisbury, indiscriminate barrel bombs in Syria, the bumping off of political opponents on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, none of these actions were graced with an apology. When Russia sets about fulfilling its worst wishes – in the most recent instance, Putin’s wish to restore the old Soviet empire – everyone has to accept a ruthless economy in these things: if you’ll permit me to get all proverbial for a moment, when you dream of eating omelettes, make sure you break other people’s eggs. There’s no point being apologetic, as from the start it is clear your dream can only be realised as someone else’s nightmare. Far from apologising, therefore, pretend to get angry. Look the camera in the eye and thunder at the world: “The eggs were ours originally and need to be returned to their rightful owners.”

A week after reporting Lavrov’s remarks, the Guardian looked at the routine uses and abuses of history in modern Russia: ‘But already for some years, the victory cult has been referred to by critics as pobedobesie, a derogatory play on the Russian words Paul Klee’s angel of history

Before, I had only a sketchy knowledge of mainstream Zionism. The concept of Revisionist Zionism was entirely new to me. It was a shock to learn that a man named Ze›ev Jabotinsky, responsible for the novel’s epigraph and with a posthumous role in the narrative, had written an essay called The Iron Wall which explicitly advocated the colonisation of Palestine at the expense of the existing population. It was an even bigger shock to learn that another revisionist, Abba Ahimeir, had been an early admirer of Mussolini, writing a regular column entitled «From the Notebook of a Fascist» and that, in 1928, he had greeted Jabotinsky’s return to Jerusalem with an article entitled «On the Arrival of Our Duce.» These men didn’t just share the same optician as Trotsky. They were also, like him, myopic visionaries, though their vision was the very antithesis of Marxist, based on that of a man who, if he didn’t like the way you looked at him, would snatch the glasses from your nose, tenderly grind them under his heel, and then march off to conquer OneAbyssinia.doesn’t need to be Christopher Hitchens to wonder if the colonial instincts of the revisionists still linger in the bloodstream of Israel’s right. Joshua Cohen himself certainly thinks so. In an interview after the announcement of his Pulitzer Prize, he characterised revisionism as “the idea that Jews don›t have to wait for the powers of the world to give them a land... it had to be taken by force and it had to be governed cruelly.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As I said, Jabotinsky has a ghostly presence in the novel. Now one of the problems I have with Cohen’s slimly overweight volume regards tone. It is a hybrid, a kind of chimera, with a tragic story to tell, and yet a tendency to farce or black comedy. Obviously, the ‘tragi-comic’ has a long tradition in literature, but that doesn’t mean it has ever been easy to pull off. The comic part in Cohen’s case is distilled into the incident with Judy’s nose. The darker side is concentrated in her father’s dream about Jabotinsky. When that dream appears, about halfway into the narrative, it promises to take the story in a very different direction. It’s my view that Cohen dodged that route. He opted instead for a rapid, sometimes confusing account of the Netanyahu family’s riotous behaviour, playing it for laughs. The problem is that the laughs are few and far between, and we lose the focus on Blum’s interior agony. After the dream of Jabotinsky – an account reminiscent of Kafka –Cohen goes against his own strengths. Tragi-comedy proves too fine 51 26/08/22 Entertaining as it is to be privy to the Foreign Minister’s off-the-cuff proverbs, perhaps he should leave the generalisations to Leonid Tolstoy.

for victory and obscurantism – “victory mania” is an approximate English translation. As this pobedobesie metastasised year on year, the phenomenon took on forms that were ever more grotesque: schools put on performances in which the children dressed up as Soviet soldiers; people posing as captured Nazis were paraded through the streets. Ever more opponents of modern Russia were branded as Nazis, neo-Nazis or Nazi accomplices’ (‘How Victory Day became central to Putin’s idea of Russian identity,’ The Guardian, 6 May 2022). Years of repetitive war re-enactments. It must all have gotten a wee bit tedious. What a relief, then, when in February real tanks finally started rolling into a sovereign country, bearing on their sides Z signs that no one could adequately explain. Z for Zelensky? Z for Zombie? Was it (my personal theory) something to do with the scar on Harry Potter’s face? Okay, that Rowling woman is a relentless propagandist for the West, but her creation would serve as a useful reminder of the Zombie Army’s collective childhood. He even had the Lenin glasses. Oh no, hang on a minute, that was Trotsky. In the end, sadly, none of these explanations quite cut it. In fact, given the paradoxes of the situation, the Z may as well have stood for Zelig. He was the character that first came to mind when I read about Lavrov’s trolling. I actually went back to the film, or I should say excerpts from it on YouTube, to refresh my memory. These days, I don’t often watch Woody Allen films, for reasons of fashion as much as anything else. Maybe I ought to be less of a fashion slave. I have scenes from some of his earlier films stored in my brain, like one from I’ve no idea where, of a dream/nightmare sequence where Woody is carried aloft on a cross, but unable to park as two other crucifixion parties are competing for the same space. That took some chutzpah, as they say. ‘Zelig’ has not aged well from the point of view of production values. These days you could have used the old black and white footage so much more convincingly. But the ideas are as fresh as ever. Zelig is an absurd parody of the assimilated Jew. He assimilates so well, that when placed next to an Irishman his hair instantly turns ginger. This compulsion to adapt and fit in reaches its nadir when he flees the rehab clinic and is spotted attending a rally at Nuremberg, sitting among the Nazi elite behind the Führer. It’s assimilation carried to such absurd lengths that, like Lavrov’s vile mischief, it dares to imagine Jewishness adaptable enough to turn Nazi. Which brings me back to The Netanyahus. For all my cavils about the novel, I have to say few books ever opened up so many areas of research, including the disputes over another famous Z word.

Thunder at them (courtesy of The Dictionary of Received Ideas)

Trotsky Visionary Revisionary with same glasses

What a relief, then, when in February real tanks finally started rolling into a sovereign country, bearing on their sides Z signs that no one could adequately explain. Z for Zelensky? Z for Zombie?

52 26/08/22 Culture

a line to tread. Allow me to return for a moment to the strictly comic aspect. In my previous article, I began to address the issue of noses. It was not intended to sound trivial. One strand in the novel, which comes from Harold Bloom’s Freudian preoccupations, is the sexuality of Blum’s daughter and her ruse for altering her nose. Without wishing to introduce a spoiler here, let me say she gets her wish and by the end of the story her nose, if we accept the Fagin stereotype, is no longer Jewish. Does this make her a shiksa now? Is this why one of the Netanyahu sons is attracted to her? Like the question of her resistance or consent to his sexual advances, there is no time for careful answers amid the pell-mell of the novel’s catastrophe, but one thing is certain – the nose represents the fulfilment of a wish, and the wish on Judy’s part is to be American, thus renouncing the outsiderhistory of her suffering people. If this is a parallel to Blum’s dream (in which Judy has a starring role), then it is the American Dream in all its pristine glory, untroubled by the anguish of the ghetto. Noses were already a Freudian issue. The great mind doctor regularly snorted cocaine for his headaches, but it is an unfortunate incident in his early practice that may be lurking behind Judy’s drama. At the time, Freud was under the spell of a young friend and fellow enquirer into female hysteria, Wilhelm Fliess. Their conviction that neuroses derived from the nose led to an operation on the one belonging to the unfortunate Emma Eckstein. There is no need, thankfully, to go into the details of the procedure here, but it was not pretty, and nor was Emma so pretty by the end of it. Freud, who was on the scene, fainted away. Later, it turned out Emma had been conscious throughout the operation, and when Freud came round, she greeted him with the words “So this is the strong sex!” According to David Howes, the whole affair was a trauma for Freud that would never be forgotten: ‘…given his embarrassment at having fainted; […] given Eckstein›s taunt to his masculinity; given how his confidence in his friend Fliess (whom he had worshipped up to that point) was shattered; and, given how torn he felt between needing Fliess and blaming him. In light of all this baggage, is it any wonder that Freud chose to cut the nose out of psychoanalytic theory, and to seal off that whole painful period of his life? A sort of nasal taboo took the place of the fascination with nasality that had so occupied him and Fliess throughout the 1890s. As a result, Freud never did come to terms with his own nasality and, it appears, he even projected his own arrested development in this domain onto the human species!’ If Freud cut the nose out of his theories, the incident had another unforeseen outcome. This was a dream Freud experienced some time later, one which was exceptionally vivid and connected to real life events. It involved a different woman, known as Irma. With the help of the dream of Irma’s injection, as it is known, Freud was able to theorise the mechanisms of wish-fulfilment, a key element of Ofpsychoanalysis.course,detecting how exactly wishes are fulfilled by our dreams

is no easy matter. Despite false leads and feints, the dreamer’s true intent has to be rumbled. The fulfilment of a wish in the real world can also be hard to determine. As Freud demonstrates in his Psychopathology of Everyday Life, even accidentally smashing an expensive vase can be the fulfilment of a secret wish to do so. It may be obvious that Judy gets the nose she was after, but the reasons why she was after it in the first place are far harder to divine. As for her father’s nightmare, well, who would attempt to work out the wish fulfilment involved in what is quite probably a fictional dream? Unless, that is, the dream is actually not properly oneiric at all, but the description of how the fulfilment of some people’s daydreams can become other people’s nightmare. I know: complicated. Before looking at Blum’s dream in Chapter Six, here is another dream, a daydream strictly speaking, from the main player in it. I will quote Jabotinsky’s words at length, as they tell us so much about his attitude to the Old Jewry of the Diaspora and its utopian antidote: ‘To imagine what a true Hebrew is, to picture his image in our minds, we have no example from which to draw. Instead, we must use the method of ipcha mistavra (Aramaic for deriving something from its opposite): We take as our starting point the Yid (used here as pejorative for Jew) of today, and try to imagine in our minds his exact opposite. Let us erase from that picture all the personality traits that are so typical of a Yid, and let us insert into it all the desirable traits whose absence is so typical in him. Because the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks handsomeness we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty, stature, massive shoulders, vigorous movements, bright colours, and shades of colour. The Yid is frightened and downtrodden; the Hebrew ought to be proud and independent. The Yid is disgusting to all; the Hebrew should charm all. The Yid has accepted submission; the Hebrew ought to know how to command. The Yid likes to hide with bated breath from the eyes of strangers; the Hebrew, with brazenness and greatness, should march ahead to the entire world, look them straight and deep in their eyes and hoist them his banner: “I am a Hebrew!”’ (from Dr Herzl) That Jabotinsky was writing like this back in 1905 is an indication of how far Zionist thought had already come. In the 1890s, Theodor Herzl had infused the movement with a new ideology and practical urgency, leading to the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, which created the World Zionist Organisation. Herzl’s aim was to initiate the necessary preparatory steps for the development of a Jewish state. However, in Jabotinsky’s words we can already hear the fanatic’s hyperbole. His assertion that ‘we have no example from which to draw’ is belied, not by a Fascist ideal – that would obviously be anachronistic – but by a relatively innocuous Hellenism with a healthy dose of mens sana in corpore sano. This ideal would be difficult to live up to, and the young idealist doesn’t sound easy to However,please. it is the negative image of the ‘Yid’ that seems the most hyperbolised. To make his point, Jabotinsky has created a nightmare subhuman in contrast to his dream of the Jewish New Man, and to create this Golem he has employed the language and imagery of the kind of people who drew the caricatures or carried out the pogroms. The ‘Yid’ is emphatically not assimilated. Jabotinsky, coming from Odessa, has an image in his mind of the ghettoised and vulnerable populations of the east, routinely subjected to persecution. To this day there are relics of these attitudes in Europe. As recently as 2014, a town called Castrillo Matajudíos (Castrillo Kill the Jews) voted to change its name to Castrillo Mota de Judíos (Castrillo Hill of the Jews). The surprise here is to encounter the same degrading image in the prose of a leading Zionist. I shall come to the Spanish angle in a second. It is startling to see how the dreamy idealist, with his athletic vision of the Grecian Hebrew, became (by the time he wrote The Iron Wall in 1923) the steely pragmatist of Jewish colonisation. The key is in that word. At a time when the old European empires had taken a sound beating in the Great War and within years of the biggest Empire of them all crumbling into independent fragments, the Zionists were proposing to colonise a country already inhabited by a hostile population. The Iron Wall makes no bones about this: Jabotinsky knows very well that the Arabs in Palestine will not be bought off, that they will fight for their land as other indigenous populations have done, from the Papuans to the native Americans: ‘…this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living Onepeople.’cannot accuse Jabotinsky of idealism here. His eyes are so wide open to the reality of what he proposes, one wonders how he could bear to look. The Angel of History must have similar difficulties.

53 26/08/22 Which brings me back to The Netanyahus. For all my cavils about the novel, I have to say few books ever opened up so many areas of research, including the disputes over another famous Z word.

Zelig glad-eyeing Adi

Is this the kind of cruelty Joshua Cohen was alluding to?

Culture

One strand in the novel, which comes from Harold Bloom’s Freudian preoccupations, is the sexuality of Blum’s daughter and her ruse for altering her nose.

Apparently, neither it nor the great ‘revisionist’ have the luxury of the Viennese doctor: they cannot collapse in a faint, nor can they avert their eyes. Instead, Jabotinsky sees with unblinking clarity the consequences of a dream that amounts to someone else’s nightmare. His future looks remarkably similar to the Palestinian present. Here was a man who could acknowledge the other as a mirror image of himself, as a people with the same claim as his own to selfdetermination, a land and a future, yet for all his flip-flopping over the rights of the Arabs through the years, his guiding conviction never changed that the Arabs would have to be worn down and demoralised before they would comply: ‘…the only way to obtain such an agreement, is the iron wall, which is to say a strong power in Palestine that is not amenable to any Arab pressure. In other words, the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present.’

Benzion (whose name, Blum notes, means ‘the son of Zion’) is the bomb that hits Blum’s comfortable American lifestyle. He has renounced both the nostalgia of the ghetto for a forever deferred Zion, and the assimilation that Blum and his daughter’s nose represent. The effects of this ‘bomb’ are both theatrical and farcical. Catastrophe strikes. But on a purely psychological level, the real effect occurs at the centre of the book, right before the violent alteration of Judy’s nose, in a dream sequence concerning Jabotinsky that could have taken the narrative to a very dark place indeed. It is autumn in Oxbridge. Blum and his daughter Judy are walking between medieval buildings, she in a pill-box hat, her nose clamped ‘…awith type of spring-loaded metal-and-rubber bicycle-clip that was the nasal version of orthodontia: she wore it while sleeping to straighten her Theynose.’pass young cadets doing bayonet drills on a neatly mown lawn until they reach a hall fringed with classrooms, where ‘brownovercoated guys’ subject captive children, some of Judy’s classmates, to ‘interrogative torture,’ including immersion head first in drums of boiling oil or flaying with combs. Inquisitorial. The Inquisition in this case, however, appear to be the victims from the earlier Inquisition. One boy is tied to a stake and his tormentors demand to know “why didn’t Roosevelt bomb the tracks?” – a reference to Benzion’s anachronistic conflation of the Spanish with the race theorists of Auschwitz. Blum tries to intervene, but the door slams in his face. He scurries to catch up with his daughter and then they enter 54 26/08/22

Benzion Netanyahu, the antihero of Cohen’s novel, had served as Jabotinsky’s amanuensis. He was also a close friend of Abba Ahimeir. His work on the Inquisition’s treatment of the ‘conversos’ or ‘Marranos’ sought to prove that the Spanish persecuted the Jews who had converted to Christianity not for religious, but for racial reasons, on the basis of limpienza de sangre or purity of the blood. In his obituary, the New York Times accused Netanyahu’s chief work, Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain, of ‘looking through the rear-view mirror of the Holocaust.’ I don’t intend to go into the intricacies of the debate here, but Netanyahu’s preoccupations may well inform some of the details of the dream in Chapter Six.

The actual Duce Netanyahu senior Another traumatic nose job

At which point the dream ends abruptly, before Blum, or anyone else, has time to ask “Whose dream is this nightmare?”

Jabotinsky completes the interview and finally acknowledges Blum as a fellow committee member, but Blum doesn’t know what his daughter is being interviewed for. Besides, maybe it is he, the dreamer, who is really being tested. He looks up, a thing his wife tells him he does whenever he lies (another little psychopathological detail), and instead of a ceiling and lights, he sees a high gallery of the kind found in operating theatres or law courts, or even a heavenly scene in Mantua: A cast of minor characters, from Blum’s college and elsewhere, are seated there, including his Uncle Sruly, ‘…holding the pallid naked body of his wife whom he’d married because she’d gone through Birkenau, which meant she’d had to be kind to him, and who after he’d disappeared gassed herself in the kitchen of their windowless apartment… and they were shouting opinions at me… they were shouting and from their mouths was coming fire…’

55 26/08/22

Is this the Jewish Adolf in charge of reeducating the masses? Or a Russian president and self-styled Nazihunter about to deliver a history lesson? Jabotinsky, perhaps owing to his short-sightedness, ignores Blum and only offers Judy a seat. He then pores over a piece of paper and reviews Judy’s grades. ‘I’m worried about the lack of physical pursuits,’ he says. ‘Healthy body, healthy mind.’ There it is, the phrase dreaded by every bookish swot. Judy says she has been getting into winter sports and her interrogator is satisfied. After politely asking if she minds, Jabotinsky then removes her nose device and uses it to clip his paperwork together. He demands her absolute obedience, which she pledges to the cause. Then we get this phrase: ‘He opened and closed a few desk drawers, as if to ensure that his own dream was being kept secure…’ This is a dream contained within someone else’s nightmare. Blum’s to be exact. The psychopathology of everyday life is up to its old tricks. Jabotinsky, who earlier regarded Judy ‘heavily, ironically, not without eroticism,’ is like Freud’s doctor with his phallic stethoscope. But it is unclear whether Blum or Cohen interprets the desk drawers in this way. And if it’s Blum, we cannot know for sure if his waking or his sleeping self does the interpreting. If the latter, this dream is a rare example of auto-interpretation. It’s as if the analyst is on the inside, looking out.

what appears to be Blum’s office. Here they encounter Jabotinsky: ‘The dark round Bakelite glasses, the plastered-down, sweptaside, steel-grey, steel-white Hitlerite hair topped with a tasselled Hitlermortarboard…’withamortarboard.

Freud and Fliess in happier times

A ceiling by Giulio Romano

Footnote: The picture at the top of this article is Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus. Walter Benjamin purchased a print of it in 1921 In his Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940) he wrote: ‘the angel’s eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.’

Before looking at Blum’s dream in Chapter Six, here is another dream, a daydream strictly speaking, from the main player in it.

56 26/08/22 The Telegraph and Later the Telephone Constitute Early Virtual Worlds

Nattie’s metaverse romance began with anonymous texting. At first “C” would admit only to living in a nearby town. Nattie eventually learned “Clem” was a man with a solitary office job like hers. For Nattie “lived, as it were, in two worlds”–the world of office tedium and an online world where “she did not lack social Textingintercourse.”drewthem closer: “annoyances became lighter because she told him, and he sympathized.” Nattie soon realized “she had woven a sort of romance about him who was a friend ‘so near and yet so far’.” Their blossoming relationship almost failed when Clem’s co-worker visited Nattie’s office pretending to be Clem, but the deceit was exposed in time for their “romance of dots and dashes” to succeed. With that last sentence I gave away the ending to “Wired Love,” source of the quotes above. Published in 1879, Ella Thayer’s novel of “the telegraphic world” makes remarkable predictions. Yet “Wired Love” is planted firmly during the time of what jour nalist Thomas Standage aptly termed the “Victorian Internet.” Many aspects of the current metaverse were already familiar 143 years ago.

WHAT’S OLD IS NEW History is more than fun facts: It deeply shapes ways of think

TechnologyByTomBoellstorff

The Metaverse Has a Surprisingly Long History

Another example of metaverse history’s importance concerns the idea of virtual environments. Virtual worlds don’t just connect places; they’re places in their own right. People played chess using the telegraph 150 years ago; those vir tual chessboards weren’t located on either end of the wire. In 1992

In 1990, Habitat’s founders concluded that the metaverse is de fined more by the interactions among people within it than by the technology that creates it. They were particularly skeptical of virtual reality technologies, noting “the almost mystical euphoria that currently seems to surround all this hardware is, in our opin ion, both excessive and somewhat misplaced.”

Credit: (TNS)

Fast-forward almost 20 years. Land next to Snoop Dogg’s virtual mansion is scarce: A plot could cost $450,000 because The Sand box doesn’t have P2P. But were the company to suddenly add P2P, that $450,000 investment could become nearly worthless.

LEARNING FROM HISTORY

The metaverse has a long way to go, but it already has a long his tory. Proximity and immersion are just two examples of crucial topics this history can demystify. This is important because the current, rampant mystification isn’t accidental. The emerging version of the metaverse is overwhelm ingly owned and developed by Big Tech. These companies seek to manufacture the perception that the metaverse is new and fu turistic. But metaverse histories are real; they can reveal past mis takes and contribute to better virtual futures. This article was originally published by Fast Company. The contemporary metaverse is overwhelmingly owned and developed by corporations whose profit models demand focus on the Next Big Thing.

At issue isn’t VR’s potential, but the Matrix-like idea that sensory immersion is necessary to the metaverse in every instance. The key distinction is between sensory immersion and social immer sion. The idea that virtual environments require VR misunder stands “immersion.” It’s also ableist, since not everyone can see or hear. The metaverse’s history indicates that social immersion is the metaverse’s foundation.

Bruce Sterling noted that telephone calls don’t take place in your phone or in the other person’s phone. They take place in a virtual environment: “The place between the phones. The indefi nite place out there, where the two of you, two human beings, actually meet and communicate.”

Consider what metaverse history reveals about virtual real estate. Pundits enthuse about the virtual “land rush” and emphasize lo cation. For instance, virtual world The Sandbox sells plots for around $2,300, but in December 2021 someone paid $450,000 to purchase land next to a virtual mansion owned by rap star Snoop WhyDogg.the price spike? Co-founder Sebastien Borget explained that The Sandbox has a finite number of plots, and people can access only adjacent plots. Thus, only a few people can own virtual land next to Snoop Dogg. I believe that The Sandbox is deeply indebted to the virtual world Second Life, where spaces to practice building have been termed “sandboxes” since its 2002 launch. Second Life originally had “point-to-point teleportation” (P2P). You could arrive anywhere in an instant. But in 2003 Linden Lab, the company that owns Second Life, disabled P2P. Residents try ing to reach a destination would appear at the nearest “telehub.” This had implications for real estate. Valuable for businesses and entertainment, plots of land near telehubs sold for top dol lar—until 2005, when Linden Lab suddenly announced the end of telehubs and the return of P2P. Land near former telehubs no longer had special value; some peo ple lost thousands of dollars. The most powerful landlord can’t change the laws of physics, but Linden Lab could literally recode scarcity out of existence.

REAL ESTATE AND THE LAWS OF VIR TUAL PHYSICS

That pundits have tended to ignore this fact reveals the danger of forgetting metaverse history.

57 26/08/22 ing and acting. As an anthropologist who’s been studying virtual worlds for almost two decades, I’ve found that the metaverse’s rich past shapes what too often appears unprecedented. This isn’t accidental. The contemporary metaverse is over whelmingly owned and developed by corporations whose profit models demand focus on the Next Big Thing. This typically sidelines history–with massive financial and social implications. At its core, the metaverse is defined by the concept of the virtual world. As “Wired Love” illustrates, the telegraph and later the telephone constitute early virtual worlds. Multi-user dungeons, or MUDs, arose in the second half of the 20th century. These virtual worlds appeared on local computer networks in the late 1970s, and entered dial-up internet services in the 1980s and 1990s. Richard Bartle, co-creator of the first MUD, noted that by 1993 over 10% of all internet traffic was on MUDs. Virtual worlds with graphics, including avatars, date back to Habitat, launched in 1985. With advent of broadband in the 2000s, many key aspects of the contemporary metaverse became established. Longtime metaverse observers like Wagner James Au have repeatedly em phasized how many “new” developments have rehashed longstanding debates.

IMMERSION–SENSORY OR SOCIAL?

MONDAY: A RESISTANCE BAND AND WORKOUT

For all water exercise, start with five or 10 minutes of activity, and slowly increase the workout length over time.

Swim some laps or walk in the shallow end of a pool. Both activities work the core muscles in the back and abdomen.

Our ancestors might have been surprised to know that future generations would struggle to keep their muscles strong. After all, it took lots of work to survive each day -- farming, hunt ing, hand-washing clothes, and walking or riding animals to get around. All of that activity helped people maintain muscle Nowstrength.ittakes a concerted effort to strengthen the muscles, es pecially in the core (the abdomen, hips, back, and chest). Core muscles help us bend, lift, sit, stand, climb, and stay active and Youindependent.shoulddo a core workout at least two or three times per week. Or take a cue from our ancestors and do daily core-boost ing activities. There are so many kinds that you can do a differ ent one every day of the week, and it doesn’t have to be fancy. “Variety keeps it interesting. And it’s safe to work the core every day for about 10 to 30 minutes, as long as you don’t have intense muscle fatigue,” says Christina Ruggeri, a physical therapist in the Sports Medicine Division of Harvard-affiliated Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Doing a Few Minutes of Activity Per Day Boosts Health

58 26/08/22

“It’s especially helpful for people with arthritis. The buoy ancy offloads pressure on the joints,” Ruggeri says. Working against the resistance of the water is good for your bones. Other water activities that engage the core include treading wa ter (even if you’re holding a pool noodle), swimming while holding a kickboard, and water aerobics.

HealthByHeidiGodman

SUNDAY: MARCHING Put on your favorite Sousa march, lift your knees high, and move your arms to the music. March around your house or even your neighborhood. If you need more stability, try one of these Marchapproaches.near a countertop for support. “Don’t sway from side to side. Keep your spine straight and your torso upright,” Ruggeri Marchadvises.while seated. “Scoot your bottom forward on the chair, so your back is not supported and you have to engage your ab dominal and back muscles to sit up straight,” Ruggeri says. To make it harder, sit on a stability ball. “It forces you to engage the core muscles just to maintain your balance, so you’ll work the core even more,” Ruggeri says.

WEDNESDAY: YARD OR HOUSEWORK

for Every Day of the Week

Simple Core Strengtheners

TUESDAY: A WATER WORKOUT

Get some inexpensive resistance bands (long elastic bands, about $12, available online or at a big-box store) and follow a resistance band workout. You can find resistance band workout videos on YouTube. An example of a resistance band exercise that works your core is doing rows. Sit on the floor with your legs stretched out in front of you. Loop a resistance band around the soles of your feet (see “Move of the month”). Hold one end of the band in each hand. Bend your elbows and pull both ends of the band toward you, like you’re pulling oars. Repeat the rowing move ment 10 times, take a break, and do another 10. You can also do this activity while seated and sitting up straight.

Turn yard work or housework into a core workout: tighten your abdominal muscles as you lift a basket of laundry, carry grocer ies, climb stairs, push a vacuum back and forth, rake leaves, or shovel snow. Those activities engage the core muscles. Tight

You can use your own body weight to strengthen your core muscles. Try a series of lunges, squats, and modified planks (lean toward a desk or countertop, prop yourself up on your elbows, and hold the position).

Credit: (TNS)

“Don’t just try a 30-second plank. That sets you up for failure. Do it for five seconds, and increase it in five-second increments as you get better at it,” Rug geri says.

FRIDAY: A HIP-SWIVELING WORKOUT

This article was originally published by Harvard Health Letter. 59 26/08/22

The key to maximizing core benefits and staying safe is keeping your back straight and tightening your ab dominal muscles. But ease into a body-weight routine.

THURSDAY: BODY-WEIGHT WORKOUT

It’s important to maintain good posture and be kind to your knees while you work. “Keep your back straight and hinge at the hips if you have to lean forward to rake. Kneel on just one knee when gardening. And use a staggered stance -- with one leg in front of the other -- when pushing and pulling a vacuum, to help keep your back straight,” Rug geri suggests.

ening them while you work protects them against injury.

SATURDAY: YOGA Do some yoga, which strengthens your core muscles and also stretches them. Yoga has many other benefits, too: it helps improve your balance, flexibility, overall strength, mobility, mood, range of motion, reflexes, focus, and quality of life. The exer cise works by combining breathing techniques with mostly static (still) postures. “You need to engage your core in order to maintain stability for the duration of the pose or stretch,” Ruggeri says. You can also practice yoga while seated. Just scoot for ward in the chair so you activate your core muscles.

Get out of your comfort zone and try something different, like a hip-swiveling workout. This could be hula hooping, merengue dancing, or belly dancing. Search YouTube for hip-swiveling workout videos and see what appeals to you. And it’s okay if you’re not as limber as you once were. “It’s harder to move your hips when you’re older, but it incorporates a lot of your core muscles -- and it’s fun,” Ruggeri says. She notes that a hip-swiveling workout could be risky if you have arthritis in your lower back or hip, so be sure to get the okay from your doctor first, and then follow only a beginner workout.

Water activities that engage the core include treading water (even if you’re holding a pool noodle), swimming while holding a kickboard, and water aerobics.

Marin was on the list of the BBC’s 100 Wom en announced on November 23, 2020. On De cember 9, 2020, she was selected by Forbes to rank 85th on the list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. In 2020 she became a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Marin was selected for the cover of Time magazine’s “Time100 Next” theme is sue, which showcases one hundred influential leaders worldwide. The German newspaper Bild has praised Marin as the “coolest politi cian in the world.” ra it

60 26/02/21 Po rt

Sanna Marin: The Youngest PM in the History of Finland

Marin became Finland’s youngest-ever prime min ister and was the youngest serving state leader until Sebastian Kurz gained that distinction in January In2020.March 2021, Marin condemned the persecution of ethnic Uyghurs in the Chinese province of Xin jiang. In a New Year’s address at the start of 2022, she stated that Finland had the right to join NATO if it wanted to and should consider this option. This action caused an adverse reaction from the Russian Onmedia.May 15, Niinistö and Marin announced that Finland would apply for NATO membership, and on May 17, the Finnish Parliament approved the proposal 188-8. On May 26, 2022, Marin went to Kyiv at the invita tion of Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, where she met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She also signed a bilateral framework agreement on rebuilding Ukraine’s education with Ukrainian PM Denys Shmyhal. On May 31, she welcomed a deal agreed by all EU leaders to ban more than 90% of Russian oil im ports by the end of the year, voting for it in the European Council.

The BBC described Marin’s political career as “beginning at the age of 20,” in the years follow ing her high school graduation and beginning her affiliation with the Social Democratic Youth. Ma rin joined the Social Democratic Youth in 2006 and was its first vice president from 2010 to 2012. In 2008, she unsuccessfully ran for election to the City Council of Tampere, but she stood again and was elected in the 2012 elections. She became chairman of the City Council within months, serv ing from 2013 to 2017. In 2017, she was re-elected to the City Council. She first gained prominence after videos of her chairing contentious meetings were shared on YouTube. Marin was elected second deputy chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 2014. In 2015, she was elected to the Finnish Parliament as an MP from the electoral district of Pirkanmaa. Four years later, she was re-elected. On June 6, 2019, she be came the Minister of Transport and Communica Intions.December 2019, Marin was nominated by the Social Democratic Party to succeed Antti Rinne as the Prime Minister of Finland, but Rinne formally remained party leader until June 2020. In a narrow vote, Marin prevailed over Antti Lindtman. Most of the ministers in her five-party cabinet are women. She is the third female head of government in Fin land, after Anneli Jäätteenmäki and Mari Kiviniemi.

Illustrated by Jeannette Khouri Sanna Mirella Marin, 36, is a Finnish politician who has served as the prime minister of Finland since 2019. Taking office at the age of 34, she is the youngest person to hold the office in Finnish history and the world’s third-youngest state leader after Dritan Abazović of Montenegro and Gabriel Boric of Chile. Marin is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP) and has been a Member of Parlia ment since 2015. Following Antti Rinne’s resigna tion in the wake of the postal strike controversy, Marin was selected as prime minister on December 8, Recently,2019. the Finnish PM found herself amid con troversy after a video of her partying and dancing with friends was leaked on social media. To clear suspicions after the publication of the party video footage, Marin took a drug test and tested negative on August 22, 2022. “I did nothing illegal,” she told reporters, reiterating that she has never done Shedrugs.was born on November 16, 1985, in Helsinki. She lived in Espoo and Pirkkala before moving to Tampere. Her parents separated when she was very young. The family faced financial problems, and Marin’s father, Lauri Marin, struggled with alco Marinholism. graduated from Pirkkala High School in 2004 at the age of 19. She worked in a bakery and as a cashier while studying, graduating with a bach elor’s and master’s degree in Administrative Sci ence from the University of Tampere. In January 2018, Sanna Marin and her partner Markus Räikkönen had a daughter. In August 2020, Marin and her partner, who works in communica tion, married at the Prime Minister’s official resi dence Kesaranta.

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Ibn Rushd›s name was mentioned as a means to an end, to justify and ground their thinking. If one reads ibn Rushd or just a little of his work, one realizes the lack of any political agenda – his true aim, even in his criticism of Ghazali, was not to mobilize and reform the public, the purpose for which most enlightenment figures employed their philosophies. But instead to protect philosophy from the attacks of theologians. He saw reason as complementary and as an analytic tool to interpret certain aspects of revelation to understand it more accurately. Furthermore, such exploration of reason was not to be told to the public but kept within the circle of scholars. To maintain that Averroes was an enlightenment figure like Voltaire and Kant is either a misunderstanding of Averroes›s thoughts or of the enlightenment thinkers.

Ibn Rushd, also known as Averroes, was a 12thcentury Andalusian polymath and jurist. He is known for defending Aristotelian philosophy against the famous attack of Al Ghazali. Recently he has been at the center of an ideological warfare. He has been employed for different purposes, some saw him as someone who separated revelation and reason, religion and the state. They tried to showcase him as a gateway to reconciling modern life and Islam. Other more traditional scholars saw Ibn Rushd as a strict follower of Islamic doctrines and dogmas, and as such, they claim Islam already has modernity within it. Such ideological warfare presents itself in the work of Farah Antun. He saw Averroes as a secularist and dismissed his dogmatic ideas by claiming that Averroes only wrote it due to cultural and social pressures. Muhammed Abduh was another towering figure who defended Ibn Rushd against such accusations but employed him to encourage toleration. We can highlight how he was used by Hasan Hanafi, a Marxist and Islamist, Muhammed Imarah, and Muhammed al Ansari. The most crucial figure was Al Jabri, who distinguished between demonstrative, revelation, and mysticism, three modes of thought in the Islamic culture. He states that a demonstrative way of thinking was a characteristic of western Islam (Andalusia and North Africa) and mysticism and revelation of that of the east. He says that the three modes of thought prevented any real progress, then in the same sentence, he states we should carry on the ibn Rushdian spirit and let go of the Ibn Sina and Ghazali, who represent the mystical side. Another critical point is that Al Jabri sees Averroes as the first to criticize tyranny and encourage reform through his political writing. Such a different interpretation for one figure is highly puzzling and it seems not to be an accurate historical methodology. Nor did any of them want to reach the truth.

62 26/08/22 pinion oIbnRushd,havingmasteredtheIslamicsciencesandthephilosophes,wasseenasagatewayforwesternisedintellectualstoentersecularistideasgroundedonreliablesourcesBySaifAl-Abri Ibn

Ibn Rushd, having mastered the Islamic sciences and the philosophes, was seen as a gateway for westernised intellectuals to enter secularist ideas grounded on reliable sources. The Islamic scholars saw him as a figure who exemplified the enlightenment within Islam. Such a political and instrumental use of thought is more of an enlightenment characteristic than an aspect of Averroes› writings. For further understanding of the topic, I would highly recommend “Averroes, Kant and the Origins of the Enlightenment: Reason and Revelation in Arab Thought” by Saud AlTamamy. Rushd, the Midst of an Ideological Warfare

In recent times, Arabic and Islamic intellectual discourse has been predominantly a response to different aspects of modernity. One of the questions that scholars spent hours on is – why have the Arabs fallen behind? A more pragmatic formulation of the question is – how should we respond to and overcome the dominance of western cultural, economic, and military powers? Answers have varied between two main currents, one believes that the Islamic heritage must be abandoned, and we must imitate the western enlightenment with its secularism and conception of personal liberty. The other current believes that we must bring about a unique Arabic enlightenment that is formulated originally from its Islamic heritage and involves the return to traditional values. The main question posed by enlightenment thinkers was about the relationship between philosophy and religion, reason and revelation, where the latter was severely limited and shaped by the former. In the Islamic discourse, this question has been a significant point of discussion, and the name Ibn Rushed has been at the center of it.

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